The Inheritance

The Inheritance by JoAnn Ross 384 pages

Wow, the cover of this book really fooled me and has more of disconnect than any book I’ve seen in a long time. It screams historical fiction with a touch of contemporary, but the actual story is the reverse. It’s a contemporary story with a dash of historical fiction.

Jackson “Jack” Swann is a conflict photographer. He goes anywhere the world is in crisis/chaos. It’s been a great profession, however with little time, or energy, for meaningful relationships.  The father of three daughter, each by a different woman, has come home to his family’s Oregon vineyard to die. Cancer is ravaging his body.

He changes his will so that the three half-sisters at least get to meet one time, and so the family business remains in the family. He hopes.

Jack’s oldest daughter is Tess. He was married her mother for a short time. He had bailed before she got to know him and she refers to him only as “the sperm donor.” A former child TV star (think Patty Duke), Tess is now a bestselling author of young adult books. She pissed at the sperm donor as now she feels she has lost him all over again. With a terrifying case of writer’s block, Tess thinks a trip to Oregon might be just what she needs to shake the cobwebs loose. She know about Charlotte, but has idea that Natalia exists.

Charlotte is the middle child, well woman now. Raised in Southern high society, Charlotte has a passion for interior design, which Jack encouraged. However, her mother has made eroded her confidence and she retreats into being the perfect wife for her politician husband, but it seems he also belittles everything she tries to do. Bad news usually comes in threes, but for Charlotte, two were a disaster. She learns about Jack’s death on the same day she learns her husband is cheating on her. And to top that off, she as no inkling that she has two sisters.

The youngest, Natalia, is the one who knows Jack the best. Her mother captured more of Jack’s heart than any other woman. Natalia has even inherited his talent for photography. She is aware of Tess and Charlotte, but doesn’t know if they know about her.

Not only Jack’s daughters inherit the vineyard, they also inherited a grandmother. Rocked by her only son’s death, she eagerly awaits the girls’ arrival so that she can get to know them. The historical fiction comes in with Grandmother Madeleine. She and her husband were French Resistance fighters during WWII.

“The Inheritance” is an interesting novel about families and receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

 

Off the Wild Coast of Brittany

Off the Wild Coast of Brittany by Juliet Blackwell 464 pages

For fans of Jenny Lecoat’s “The Girl from the Channel Islands.”

This story takes places on a fictional island, Ile de Feme, off the coast of  France’s Brittany region, the part of France that sticks out like a thumb into the Atlantic Ocean.  It has one of my favorite plot devices too, dueling timelines.

Most of the book is centered in present day. Natalie Morgen is a best-selling memoirist. In fact, people travel to the island (accessible only by boat) just to catch a glimpse of her or have their picture taken with her. But Natalie’s like isn’t going according to plan.

Her partner, Francoise-Xavier, had abandoned her to return to Paris. There he plans to open a new restaurant. But on the Ile de Feme, Natalie is left with a guest house that is stuck in a partial rehab. He has absconded with their bank account, leaving Natalie almost penniless. She is thinking of chucking the whole thing and heading, well, she isn’t sure where. Fortuantely, her sister, Alex, arrives. She is a great handywoman and pitches in to help get some of the basic repairs done.

The two sisters have never really been close, but this affords them the opportunity to get to know each other.

Alex and Natalie find an old cookbook, more like a journal, in a concealed cupboard.  It once belonged to a young woman named Violette, who has some interesting things to share. One is that she marries a man named Mark, who is besotted with her, yet she is in love with his brother, Salvatore. Quite  the dilemma!

When the Nazis occupy France, all the men on the island take their fishing boats and head for England to join de Gaulle and the Free French. The women are left to fend for themselves.  The Germans take over the entire island and many of the men are billeted in the islanders homes. Violette’s home is no exception, and she becomes friendly with Rainier, a military customs officer. As food becomes evermore scarce, Rainier helps out Violette and her parents obtain the necessary food supplies to keep them alive.

As much as this book is about relationships, it also about secrets. Everyone, past and present. on Ile de Feme has a secret---Violette, Rainier, Natalie and Alex.

Off the Wild Coast of Brittany  is a good read. I loved the descriptions of the scenery, but I hated the abundance of French words that the author used that was overkill in my opinion. Therefore,  receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany

 The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany by Lori Nelson Spielman 400 pages

 By the time this book is released to the public, hopefully the Coronavirus Pandemic is over.  Back when I was reading this in March 2020, the world was gripped with stay-at-home orders, exhausted medical staffs and too few supplies for said medical staffs. For me, though, this book was a relief.  Since going back to visit Italy is on my bucket list, it was a welcome respite from the bad news. Thank you, Natalie S. from Penguin Random House for sending me an Advanced Readers Copy.

It’s been more than two-hundred years since Filomena Fontana put a curse on her sister and cursing all second-born daughters forever after, causing them to never find true love. Based on the fact that all Fontana second-born daughters have never married, contemporary Fontanas believe the curse is real.

Fast forward to 2018 in Brooklyn, New York. At twenty-nine, Emilia, a second-born daughter, is happy with her life in the family bakery.  She makes a cannoli to die for say customers.  She works in the bakery with her father and nonna. Dad is a quiet man, but Nonna Rosa is a hard woman, expecting perfection and to be obeyed. Emilia has an apartment that she shares with a cat named Claws. Her best friend is a man she has known since they went to school together as children.

Out of the blue, a letter from her great-aunt Poppy arrives, inviting Emilia and her cousin, Lucy, to accompany her on a trip to Italy. The goal is to be at the cathedral on her eightieth birthday to meet the man she fell in love with in 1959. Aunt Poppy is estranged from the family, but Emilia remembers her sending birthday and Christmas cards. Nonna Rosa is against the trip and makes her wishes known.

Needless to stay, Emilia defies Nonna and off they go. The scenery is gorgeous; the trio’s adventures are alternately fun and sad, and family secrets are revealed…and there is a happy ending. 

I was sad when the story ended. I had come to love these characters as they navigated through uncharted territories.   “The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany?” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

 

The Vineyards of Champagne

The Vineyards of Champagne by Juliette Blackwell   416 pages

If I don’t get my Christmas cookies baked this year (2019), it’s Juliette Blackwell’s fault. She has written another compelling novel that had to be read as opposed to baking.

The story takes place in, and below, in France’s Champagne region. I first learned about the numerous cave systems that run throughout the area when I read Kristin Harmel’s “The Winemaker’s Wife.” Fascinating reading.

This story has one of my favorite storytelling devices: dualing timelines.  The present day starts off in California’s Napa Valley. Recently widowed Rosalyn Acosta, a wine rep for Small Fortune Wines, is begin sent to Reims, France, to call on the smaller growers there in hopes of gaining the rights to represent them in the States. There are only two drawbacks to this assignment. First, Rosalyn doesn’t want to go to France, Paris in particular. It was where she and her late husband, Dash, honeymooned.  Second, Rosalyn abhors champagne.

On the flight to Paris, Rosalyn lives every long-distance flyer’s nightmare. A chatty seatmate in first class.  Turns out that the seatmate, Emma, is also headed to Reims. With her she has letters from Emile Legrand, that date to World War I. The letters are are between Emile and Lucie, a childhood friend,and Doris, Emile’s marraine de guerre, or war godmother. Women who wrote to the soldier’s that didn’t have no one back home. Emma knows that to get the complete story, she must find other letters. Letters that have been sitting in attics, backs of closets, in tiny museums for decades. That is her quest and it’s clear early in the novel, that Emma pretty much well gets what she wants.

As Rosalyn is reluntanctly brought into Emma’s quest, she becomes fascinated with how the people of the Champagne moved into the cave system in order to avoid the German bombs that fell incessantly. They had schools, shops, resturants, everything that was accessible above ground.

So now Rosalyn has two goals while she is there: Land some new accounts and help Emma translate the letters.

I enjoyed reading what life was like in the caves. It sounds rather romantic, but the facts lead to a different conclusion. I really enjoyed this novel and “The Vineyards of Champagne” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

All the Flowers in Paris

 

All the Flowers in Paris by Sarah Jio     291 pages

In 2009, when Caroline awakes in a Paris hospital, she has no idea where, or who, she is. Luckily the police and emergency personnel were able to identify her by her ID. She knows where she lives and her name and that’s about it. When she’s well enough, she is taken home. The doctors say that her memory may or may not come back. Her life stories may come back in pieces, or may come back bits at a time, if it comes back at all. She has dreams of a man and a little girl named Alma, but nothing else in her life seems familiar.

The novel then switches to 1943. Celine helps her father run a local flower shop. The Nazis are entering Paris, making it extremely difficult for her to feel safe and to keep her father and daughter safe. She wishes her love, Luc, would come hope from the battlefields, but that isn’t bound to happen anytime soon. And the fact that there is some Jewish ancestry in her family, Celine and her family are in danger of being exposed to the Nazis.

Caroline tries to reconstruct her life. She eats most of her meals at a nearby restaurant, where the staff know her, but she doesn’t recognize a single face.

The woman who now comes in is a much, much different person than the restaurant staff usually incur. There is something much more mellow about her. The chef/owner takes an interest in Caroline. They both feel an attraction to each other, but Caroline is reluctant to enter into a romantic relationship, knowing that there is so much she doesn’t know about herself.

Then Caroline finds a stack of letters from a woman named Celine who onced lived in her apartment. As she tries to learn the deep secrets her home is hiding, she becomes more and more aware of her strange dream and the way people treat her. The twist on what would seem a run-of-the-mill plot has me flipping back through the novel, and saying under my breath, “No. No. No.” I didn’t see it coming until it happened.Well done, Sarah Jio, well done.

I loved this novel.  “All the Flowers in Paris” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

We Hope for Better Things

We Hope for Better Things by Erin Bartels    400 pages

As a reader and a writer, I’m always looking for compelling reads that linger long after I’ve turned the last page. Erin Bartels’s debut novel, “We Hope for Better Things,” is such a novel. Bartels startles with her ability to take three separate timelines and weave them into one excellent story.

The story lines cover contemporary times, 1960s Detroit and Civil War-era Detroit outskirts. At the heart of each plot is forbidden love, one of the most that forbidden loves of all times, between whites and blacks. There are also the stories of race relations of each time period that could easily overpower the story, but Bartels uses her skill to not let that happen.

The main protagonist is journalist Elizabeth Balsam, who works for the scandalous rag, the “Free Press.” She is about to break a story that will have major repercussions in Detroit’s political powerhouse. Before that happens, Elizabeth has been contacted by a man who claims to have a box of photos and a camera that belongs to her family. Someone she has never heard of.

Elizabeth, who loves a good story, rather reluctantly agrees to take the camera, and if she can contact the woman named Nora, and if she wants the, she’ll arrange to have the photos returned.

Nora is Elizabeth’s great-aunt on her father’s side. Her sister knows of her as does a cousin, Barb, that is also a stranger. In contacting Barb, now unemployed, Elizabeth has somehow managed to agree to see if old Aunt Nora is still fit to live alone. Elizabeth goes to visit Nora, and there she begins to learn her family history, a history that is foreign to her, and one that she participates in.

Sometimes the timelines between the contemporary story and the 1960s story was a little confusing. Nora is such a major character in those periods that it threw me off a tad when the story switched, although Bartels clearly delineates each section.

 “We Hope for Better Things” is a wonderful read, and it receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

A Sparkle of Silver

A Sparkle of Silver by Liz Johnson  368 pages

Millie Sullivan works as a waitress, trying to support herself and her grandmother, who is a nursing home suffering from dementia. But she’s behind in her payments. Their world is turned upside when the director of the nursing home gives Millie Grandma Joy’s ninety-day notice. Millie isn’t sure where to turn.

One afternoon, out of the blue, Grandma mentions a treasure is hidden away at the 1920s mansion, The Chateau once the wealthiest estates in Georgia. During this brief moment of what appears to be lucidity, she makes three other claims: 1) that her mother (Millie’s great-grandmother) was a guest there during its heyday; 2) that Grandma was conceived during that period (making Grandpa not really Grandpa); and 3) Great-Grandma left a diary at The Chateau that contains a diary leading to the treasure.

This could be the answer to Millie’s prayers. If she can located that treasure she can get Grandma into a facility that can care for her as she deserves. Luckily for Millie, old mansion is a historical attraction that gives tours. She quickly gets a job there.

One evening while hunting for the diary, she is caught by Ben, one of the attraction’s security officers. Ben has his own set of financial problems, working three jobs to right a wrong his mother committed. Millie quickly explains why she is searching an off-limits section of the house and offers him half of whatever she finds if he doesn’t turn her in.

The search begins. Millie finds Great-Grandma’s diary, but there are no secret maps. Then she learns that there is a second diary. The treasure hunt continues along with a budding romance between Millie and Ben.

This is a fun story, light hearted, a dashing romance, and family intrigue. I loved reading some of the entries on Great-Grandma’s diary, seeing what life among the wealthy was like the weekend before the last weekend before October 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday). Sometimes two of the main  characters in Great-Grandma’s life were hard to keep straight, and that is why  “A Sparkle of Silver” receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Dollhouse

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis   368 pages

In the last month or so, I was lucky enough to snag a copy of author Fiona Davis’s new book, “The Masterpiece,” and I just loved it. So of course, since that was only her third novel, I knew that I had to read her first two. This was Davis’ debut novel. It’s as equally mesmerizing.

Davis employed the dualing timelines as her structure. I’m wondering if this is going to be a continued pattern for her; I sure hope so, as I love it.

In 1952, Darby arrives from Ohio to attend the Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City. She plans to never marry and strives for financial and economic independence from her mother and step-father.  She moves into the Barbizon Hotel for Women. It wasn’t like a hotel that we think of today. She had to have three references in order to be even considered a place. Unfortunately, there isn’t room for her on the floor that houses other Gibbs’ girls. Instead, she is forced to live with aspiring models, who often distract her from her studies.

Darby becomes friends with the maid, Esme, who introduces her to the seedier side of New York. She also meets Sam, a cook in a jazz club who yearns to become a chef, using the spices he discovered in Southeast Asia.

Fast forward to 2016. The Barbizon Hotel for Women is now condos, except for the Fourth Floor. That’s where several of the now-elderly women from the Barbizon still reside. Rose and her divorced lover, Griff, have lived there for about a year. Thanks to Patrick the doorman, Rose learns about the women and the building’s history, especially the scandal that caused Esme to fall to her death from the rooftop terrace. Working for an internet news bureau called WordMerge, Rose wants to interview the women of the Fourth Floor.

She begins to knock on doors and finds some women wanting to talk with her; others who are not interested in bringing up the past. One of those women is Darby. Yup that Darby. As Rose is forced out of her apartment (Griff goes back to his wife, supposedly for a teenager’s sake), she becomes more and more obsessed with Darby and the rumors of her involvement with Esme’s death. It’s just happenstance that Darby winds up caring for Darby’s dog when the neighbor suddenly takes ill and is hospitalized.

I was enthralled with the story; I couldn’t put it down. Can’t wait to get my hands on Davis’s sophomore book, “The Address.”  “The Dollhouse” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Subway Girls

The Subway Girls by Susi Orman Schnall   320 pages

My new favorite writer, Fiona Davis, called this novel “dazzling and delicious,” and  I wholeheartedly agree. I read this dualing timelines story in one day. It was so captivating that I didn’t mind a four-hour wait at the airport for my plane to arrive. I couldn’t have been better prepared for a long wait than with this wonderful book.

The first timeline begins in the spring of 1949. Charlotte is a senior at New York City’s Hunter College, studying advertising. She dreams of becoming a junior copywriter but is realistic to know that her hopes of making it out of the typing pool are slim to none.

Times are tight in Brooklyn, where Charlotte lives with her parents. She has a steady beau who wants to marry her, but she wants to try her hand at a career first. Her father is a strict and cold man, man of few words. When his hardware store begins to fail, he insists that Charlotte leave school and help him in the store. Charlotte does help out, but refuses to abandon her studies; she only has a semester left.

Also happening in New York City is latest the latest advertising campaign for the transit system, a beauty contest that selects one young woman a month to wear the crown of Miss Subways. Charlotte concocts a scheme that if she enters and wins, she can use that platform as a way to save her father’s store. Based on the real-life Miss Subways campaign that ran between 1941 and 1976, Charlotte’s timeline captures a lost piece of New York City history.

The second time also begins in the spring, but the year is 2018. Olivia is an account executive with an advertising company that she, sort of, co-founded with a former colleague. The company has been losing business steadily and is on the brink of collapse. Thanks to a chance meeting in a bar, the company gets an opportunity to pitch a new campaign to the New York Transit System.  In her research, Olivia stumbles upon the Miss Subways campaign, and it here that Charlotte and Olivia intersect.

I loved this story. It pulled me in from the first page and didn’t let up until the ending that left me with a smile and a quiet cheer to myself.  “The Subway Girls” receives 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Light Over London

The Light Over London by Julia Kelly   288 pages

I was so excited when I learned that I had actually won a Goodreads.com giveaway!  I enter those giveways a lot, with little success. But yeah!  It arrived at the perfect time; I had just finished a novel and was trying to figure out what I would read next.

The story has one of my favorite styles: dualing timelines, covering 2017 and 1941. The story opens with Cara Hargraves and her boss, a gruff antiques dealer, appraising an estate in Gloucestershire for a woman who just wants to get rid of everything. Inside a drawer, she finds a book-shaped tin. After prying it open, she discovers a World War II photograph of a woman with the initials L.K. and a diary.

The diary covers little more than a year, from February 21, 1941, until January 5, 1942. What she reads shocks her, making her eager to return the red-bound diary to its owner.

Then the story shifts to 1941 to Cornwall. Louise Keene is nineteen years old, but wants more out of life. Her parents think she should sit around the house and wait for a boy she knows, but barely knows or likes, to return from the war. She meets a handsomely dashing Flight Lieutenant based nearby.

Louise can barely tolerate the dullness of the countryside while a war rages in nearby London. Against her parents’ wishes, she joins up, as a Gunner Girl, a member of the famed Ack-Ack Command, and is stationed as a gunner.

I loved learning about the Gunner Girls and the Ack-Ack Command. I had never heard of these terms before, but basically what they did was watch the English skies for enemy planes. Women weren’t allowed to fire the guns, only help scan the skies and help set up the machinery. Stationed in London, Louise learns, quickly, that the war is far more dangerous than she had ever perceived. She lives for the day when Paul returns and they can be married.

Fast forward to 2017, Cara, really from a divorce, has moved into a new cottage. She hopes to be able to find the person, or her family, to return the diary. Enlisting the aid of her new neighbor, the handsome professor Liam, they begin to search for the rightful proprietor.

The plot was good, a heck of a twist awaits readers, one that I saw only as it happened.  Bravo, Miss Kelly. The two timelines did intersect, but it was rather disappointing. One thing that drove me nuts was all the acronyms that were never explained. For these last two reasons, “The Light Over London,” receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Lost Carousel of Provence

The Lost Carousel of Provence by Juliet Blackwell   384 pages

From the first moment I saw the title of this novel, I wanted to read it. I received an advanced reader’s copy via Netgallery.com, but since I don’t have an eReader, the folks at Berkley Publishing were kind enough to send me a print copy.

When I read the back copy, the deal was sealed. What reader could resist “An artist lost to history, a family abandoned to its secrets, and the woman who discovers it all?” I was hooked, and the story did not disappoint. This is the book I’ll be talking about probably for the rest of the year.

The story goes like this: Cady Drake is alone in the world. A victim of California’s foster care system, she has a tough time getting close to people. There are only two people whom she trusts, her benefactor, Maxine, and a friend, Olive. Cady barely scrapes by as a local photographer, shooting school pictures, weddings, etc.  She is thrust into a spiral when Maxine suddenly dies. Cady owns an antiques carousel figure, Gus the Rabbit, whom she believes is the work of 20^th century master carver Gutave Bayol. If it is, it would be worth quite a sum. But antiques dealers assure her it is not. One night Cady accidentally breaks Gus. Inside she finds a wooden box. That box changes Cady’s life forever.

Told in dueling timelines, author Blackwell weaves a tale that had me ignoring my family, sending them out for fast food, as I read. The story bounces around from Oakland, California to Paris and other areas of France. It’s a story that transports readers from present day to 1900 to the early 2000s, and other years as they fit the story. It’s a tale of crumbling chateaus, undiscovered treasures, a mysterious photograph, and a surprising twist.

“The Lost Carousel of Provence” received 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

The Breadwinner

The Breadwinner by Deborah Ellis     171 pages

Eleven-year-old Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital city. Parvana’s father — a history teacher until his school was bombed and his health destroyed — works from a blanket on the ground in the marketplace, reading letters for people who cannot read or write. One day, he is arrested for the crime of having a foreign education, and the family is left without someone who can earn money or even shop for food.

As conditions for the family grow desperate, only one solution emerges. Forbidden to earn money as a girl, Parvana must transform herself into a boy, and become the breadwinner.

This book was hard to read - the atrocities happening in Afghanistan seem unbelievable in our modern time: women's freedoms being limited to just their homes, unless accompanied by a man, having to cover up in full while out, not being able to go to school or hold jobs, not allowed to make noise or have a voice, etc.

But this book does important work shedding some light on the experiences of Afghans at the hands of extremists. It's an important work that children and adults should be exposed to and I'm glad I was able to read it. 

Abraham Lincoln: Pro Wrestler

Abraham Lincoln: Pro Wrestler (Time Twisters #1) by Steve Sheinkin    160 pages

I’ve been obsessed with Abraham Lincoln and his family since I was a kid; I can’t get enough of him and his wife, Mary Todd.

In this delightfully imagined work, the fourth graders in Ms. Maybee’s class hate history. “It’s BORING!” Step-siblings Abby and Doc, especially Doc, are the loudest opponents of history. When Lincoln hear how much all the kids don’t like history, he decides to teach them a lesson.

Thanks to time travel Lincoln shows up in current time to teach them a lesson. He’s decided that he won’t go back to Springfield, Illinois, to win the 1860 presidential election, but instead, he wants to pursue a different dream: that of becoming a pro wrestler. Wrestling was much, much different in the 1860s than it is today, and thankfully, Sheinkin doesn’t delve into that. But that means that history is broken if Lincoln pursues his dream

It’s up to Abby and Doc to get him back to Springfield and fix history. As they learn about Lincoln and his life, they experience life in the 1860s and unwittingly learn about our greatest president ever.

At the end of the book, Sheinkin adds a chapter that tells what aspects of the story are true and what are not.  I think that young readers will enjoy history in this manner, and without meaning to, learn something. Even I learned something! Abraham Lincoln: Pro Wrestler receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Goodnight June

Goodnight June by Sarah Jio    320 pages

I’m going to warn you now: clear your calendar before you start this book. I read it on a lazy Saturday afternoon, and it’s the best book I’ve read so far this year (2017).

The premise is the imagined inspiration behind children’s author Margaret Wise Brown’s classic tale, Goodnight Moon, which turns 70 years old this year. When Brown died in 1952 (at the age of 42, from an embolism after suffering from appendicitis),the history of the little book was lost.

In this tale, June Andersen, a high-powered banking VP in New York, learns from her great-aunt Ruby’s lawyer that she has passed away…many months ago.  Her dippy mother never bothered to call with the sad news. The lawyer states in his letter that Ruby has left her beloved bookstore, Bluebird Book, and its contents and all her worldly possessions.

June flies to Seattle with every intention of selling the bookstore, or at the very least liquidating the assets and returning to her life, where her work is everything. When she arrives at the bookstore, happy (and some sad) childhood memories return, making June question her lifestyle choices, and her past.

She finds a letter from Ruby that sends her on a scavenger hunt to find letters between Brown (whom she called Brownie) and herself. As she uncovers the letters, Ruby’s secrets, along with some of June’s, are unveiled. It won’t hurt to have a box of tissues handy.

Goodnight June is a wonderful novel. The dualing timelines (one of my favorite writerly strategies) makes the reader feel as she/he is right there with Ruby and Brownie. ASs I read, I kept wanting to head to the internet to find out what aspects of the story are real and what are imagined, but I always had to stop myself and remember that the entire story (except for Magaret Wise Brown and the titles of her books) is fiction.

I hope that you love this story as much as I did. Goodnight June get 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Orphan Train

Orphan Train  by Christina Baker Kline   278 pages

In an act of judging a book by its cover, I thought that Orphan Train was a story about the Kindertransport, the organized rescue effort that happened during the nine months before the outbreak of World War II when approximately 10,000 from Germany, Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. They were placed in foster homes, schools, farm and hostels in the United Kingdom.

In a way I was wrong and right. This story is about the relocation of children, but instead of Europe, it happened here in in America between 1854 and 1929. Indigent, orphaned or abandoned children from the East Coast were put on trains to be fostered or adopted by Midwestern families, who often treated them like slaves.

Christina Baker Kline’s novel, Orphan Train, tackles this almost-forgotten aspect of American history. Vacillating between Spruce Harbor, Maine, in 2011, and New York, Chicago, and Minnesota of 1929 to 1943, readers meet two children in dire circumstances.

First is seventeen-year-old Molly, who has been sentenced to community service. She is to help an old woman cleanout her attic. The old woman, Vivian, maybe ninety-one years old, but she has a few sparks left in her. Her whole life is in that attic. She doesn’t so much want to clean it out, but look back and remember her life.

Vivian, along with her parents and three siblings, emigrated from Ireland in 1929. She and her parents lived in one of New York City’s infamous tenements. After her family dies in a fire, Vivian, whose birth name is Niamh Power, is sent to the Children’s Aid Society and ultimately placed on a train bound for Minnesota.

While Molly’s story frames Vivian’s story, both take solace in each other. Molly learns that she doesn’t have it so bad after all. Poor Vivian went by several names before Vivian was finally settled on her.

This is a tale of loss, turbulence, resilience, second chances, adaptability, and courage. Be prepared to not get anything else accomplished once you start this wonderfully woven tale.

Orphan Train receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Cold Blooded

Cold Blooded by Lisa Regan  310 pages

I was first introduced to Lisa Regan’s work when I read Finding Claire Fletcher. Tautly written---except of the last couple of chapters---it was one of the best-rounded kidnapping stories that I have read in recent years.

Regan stays within the same mystery/suspense/thriller genre, but this time the story revolves around a terminally ill former detective, Augustus Knox, and a cold case. The story is set in 2014 with the murder of Sydney Adam, high school track star, occurred in 2002.

Knox is a drunk, the unresolved murder of Sydney has haunted---and ruined---him. I’m not sure why, but I pictured him as a rather obese man, but the description of his jaundice and thin, frail frame just didn’t jive with me. Maybe if it was brought up earlier. Now Knox has congestive heart failure and COPD. His doctor believes he will be dead in three to four months, but he isn’t ready to give up entirely. He is bound and determined to find Sydney’s killer.

He enlists the help of the private detective Jocelyn Rush and her partner Anita. Rush. Jocelyn has a whole set of her own problems and is scarred individual, physically, mentally, and emotionally. But she’s still a good detective.

Now it’s up to the three of them to determine if the person of interest all those years ago can finally be brought to justice. There are some interesting twists as Jocelyn, Anita, and Know draw closer to the truth…which was shocking. Cold Blooded is a good read; I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

The Hanging Tree: A Novella

The Hanging Tree: A Novella by Michael Phillip Cash   90 pages

Arielle Harmond doesn’t know it, but her family has been living under a curse since it was put on them back in 1649. Way back then Reverend Harmond knocked up Goodwife Bennett’s granddaughter, and there is reason to suspect he may have killed the underage girl.

Arielle, seventeen years old in contemporary times, is fighting off her boyfriend, Chad, the hottest and handsomest guy in school. Chad is going everything he can to get in her pants. Arielle is doing everything she can to thwart him. The setting is Long Island, New York, beneath its infamous hanging tree.

But the two are not alone. Sitting on the branches, watching the action below, are the spirits of Goody Bennett and other members of the Harmond family. Goody Bennett can’t decide if she should interfere with the couple, while others urge her in both directions (she should/she shouldn’t).

The plot shift between the present and the past, giving readers a sense of how those that haven’t yet left this earth got there.

It’s an interesting story/ I give it 4 out of 5 stars…mainly because I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted more, especially those souls in the trees. The novella should have been a novel, and maybe someday author Cash will pursue that thread.

The Mapmaker's Children

 

The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy  336 pages

The Mapmaker’s Children spans two centuries with overlapping areas of commonality. But first, we must meet the two women who are the story’s main protagonists: Sarah Brown is an artist and the daughter of abolitionist John Brown. A century and half later, Eden Anderson is starting a new life in West Virginia with her husband Jack. Told in mostly alternating chapters, Sarah’s story occurs in the years between 1859 and 1889. Eden’s story is much more condensed and lot less well developed; it occurs 2010-2014. Sarah’s story could have stood on its own, but the addition of Eden’s and her discovery about the house she lives in succeeds in uniting the two women.

When readers first encounter Sarah, she is very sick. The severe dysentery leaves her barren. Eden and Jack have been trying everything to conceive a child for the last seven years.

Barely well, Sarah rises from her sick bed upon hearing the voices of her father and two of his most trusted allies. She volunteers to paint landscapes that can be used as maps in their work with the Underground Railroad. She has learned the quilt codes and other means of communicating to the runaway slaves the path to freedom.

After her father’s hanging for his instigation of the raid on Harper’s Ferry, the Brown family stays in close contact with the Hill family of New Charlestown, West Virginia. She and one of the Hill sons, Freddy, develop deep feelings for each other. Those feelings grow, but Sarah refuses his proposal due to her infertility.

When Jack brings home a new puppy, Eden wants nothing to do with the golden furball. She is considering leaving Jack. Yet is the newly christened Cricket who finds the door to the root cellar. As it is opened for the first time in many years, Eden finds a porcelain doll’s head. As fascinated as she is by the discovery, it becomes a secondary plot in Eden’s sections of the book, yet it is important as it unites Sarah and Eden and the house they both share. The main plot in Eden’s chapters is watching her develop close ties with the neighbor girl, Cleo, whom Jack hires as Cricket’s caretaker.

Thankfully neither woman is subjected to a sappy the-doctor-was-wrong-now-and-I’m-pregnant ending. It’s much better.

I give The Mapmaker’s Children 4 out of 5 stars.

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review. 

The Muralist

The Muralist by B. A. Shapiro  337 pages

The latest B. A. Shapiro novel, after The Art Forger, delves into the art world in two centuries and with two artists.

In 2015, Danielle Abrams (Dani) works as a cataloguer for Christies in New York. A lapsed artist, Dani receives several paintings that have been found in an attic. They could be some undiscovered works by Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, or Mark Rothko. However, Dani sees something different; the paintings remind her of her great-aunt Alizee Benoit’s work. In the world of abstract expressionism, there has always seemed to be a missing link. Dani has always thought that work could be Alizee’s.

In1939, Alizee Benoit is working for the WPA (Works Progress Adminstration under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal). Her best friends are Jackson Pollock, Leo Krasner, and Mark Rothko. They are painting murals for various buildings, but their true passion is abstract expressionism.

Alizee is a Jew from France and has left her entire family there. As Hitler’s rise to power escalates, letters from her family become more and more desperate, begging her to help them obtain visas to get out. When she’s working on her art, she wants her paintings to reflect the Jewish crisis. When she’s working for the WPA but she’s forced to paint idyllic country scenes. Alizee gets to meet Eleanor Roosevelt, who becomes a champion of her art. This seems a tad implausible, but Shapiro is so deft as a writer, that it’s interesting but not a read-breaker.

Alizee’s family (her brother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins, one with a family) manage to get aboard the MS St. Louis. The plight of the 937 Jews trying to escape persecution was mentioned, but did not delve deep enough for me. That story is all but a footnote in history now, but readers who are curious can learn more about it in: Refuge Denied: The St. Louis Passengers and the Holocaust by Sarah A. Ogilvie and Scott Miller.

In the meantime, Dani discovers envelopes containing pieces of canvas behind the paintings that were recently discovered.  Dani is also trying to uncover what happened to Alizee. She checked into a sanatorium in 1940 and simply disappeared.

The narrative weaves back and forth between the past and present, bring the art world of the mid-20^th century to life. I had hoped to be swept away into this world while I read, but I was not. I was intrigued, but I didn’t find myself anxiously awaiting the time I could get back to the story.  Therefore, I give The Muralist 4 out of 5 stars.

A Paris Apartment

A Paris Apartment by Michelle Gable, 378 pages

Julie has already offered a great review of this book here, so I won't go into details too much. Suffice it to say that this book offers two sometimes-parallel stories of women in Paris: one a modern-day American furniture expert for Sotheby's, the other a 19th-century Parisian courtesan whose belongings (and journals) are the subject of the first's studies. While this book could be summed up as a mix between historical fiction and chick lit, it's also a fascinating read, particularly when you consider that the Parisian courtesan was a real person. This was a hard book to put down, and while I'm still waffling on how I feel about the ending, it was certainly enjoyable. I've never been much of a francophile, but this book made me want to hop on a jet to Paris so I could eat some cheese, drink some wine, and snuggle up with some 100-year-old scandalous journals. Basically, I wanted to become the furniture expert, just without the emotional baggage.