Life Dust

Life Dust by Pam Webber 312 pages

Nettie and Andy have known each other all their lives. They have been featured in two previous novels, “The Wiregrass” (which I have not read) and “Moon Water” (which I loved). This third novel is not billed as a sequel, and it is a complete stand-alone.

In “Moon Water,” Nettie and Andy had broken up but now have reconciled and are engaged. Andy is in the Army and Nettie is a nursing intern at the local hospital. When Andy gets orders to go to Vietnam, it changes their trajectory. She drives hours to see him before he leaves.

They desperately want to get married but put the idea on hold. Their future is so scary. Will Andy come home? Will he come home whole? She drives hours to see him before he leaves. Will Nettie wait for him? What if he comes back in pieces? The novel alternates between Nettie and Andy.

Nettie is working in the ER when a cantankerous old man comes in with severe chest pains. He is a regular in the ER and the other nurses hate him. Nettie befriends him and He becomes like grandfather figure. Nettie s also grappling with the nurse’s supervisor’s bullying. Nettie walked in on Mrs. Woods and one of the surgeons in a comprising situation. Mrs. Woods goes out of her to remove Nettie from the program.

Andy’s sections take place in Vietnam. Andy has been assigned to lead a small reconnaissance up to the DMZ. They are gone for months at a time and must depend upon themselves to take care of their needs and to gather the needed information. Webber does a wonderful job capturing the horror of Vietnam. I swear I could feel the bugs crawling over me as I read. Andy’s experiences are well researched. Andy writes long letters to Nettie who cherishes each one of them

I loved this novel. There was a sentence that threw me because it references back to “Moon Water,” and that’s when I learned this novel was a continuation of Nettie and Andy’s story. It was a complete stand-alone.

I hope that Webber writes another novel about these two characters as I grew to admire and love them as they each faced their separate travails.

“Life Dust” receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Take My Hand

“Take My Hand” by Dolen Perkins-Valdez   368 pages

Poor. Young. Black. Screwed. That’s the theme of this unflinching novel that takes a look at women’s reproductive issues in the 1970s. Primitive to say the least.

Civil Townsend is fresh out of nursing school and wants to use her training to make a difference in the world. Her father, who is a doctor, wants her to follow in his footsteps. Civil has worked with him in his clinic and believes that nurses can make more change than doctors because they are the ones on the front lines.

She obtains a position at the Montgomery (Alabama) Family Planning Clinic. A woman of her times, Civil believes that she can help women take responsibility for their own bodies and can decide if they want to have children or not. The clinic is overseen by a white woman, Mrs. Linda Seager, who has her own ideas about the issue.

The structure of the novel is dueling timelines and toward the conclusion, a triple timeline. When the story opens, it’s 2016 in Memphis. Civil is ready to retire after a forty-year career in medicine. She is getting ready to undertake a trip back to Montgomery and is relating the story of what happened there to her daughter, Anne. 

The story shifts to 1973. Civil has been assigned her first case with the clinic. She is to make a home visit to the Williams’ family and give India and Erica their quarterly Depo-Provera, a contraceptive injunction, which was used instead of the Pill. Many thought that it was more effective at preventing pregnancy because it lasted for three months instead of having to rely on a daily dose. 

When Civil arrives at the William’s shack, she is appalled by their living conditions. It’s a one-room cabin with inadequate ventilation, a dirt floor, a hole in the floor for cooking, clothes lying in piles, and dogs running in and out.  It smells worse than it looks. It is inhabited my two young girls, their father and their grandmother. 

What shocks Civil even more is that the India is only eleven years old and Erica is only thirteen.  They smell worse than the cabin. They haven’t even kissed a boy, much less had sex. It’s not even on their radar. I don’t remember how long the girls have been on the drug, but India hasn’t even begun her menstrual cycle. 

Civil’s sense of justice takes over. She cannot, and will not, allow those young, motherless girls to grow up like this.  She begins a crusade to take them off the shot and puts them on the Pill, get them into a subsidized apartment, on food stamps, and get dad a job. 

As Civil fights for the girls, she enlists the community to help. Eventually the girls’ case lands in federal court. This novel is based on the real case of Relf vs Weinberger. 

I could not book put this down. Some of the courtroom scenes were hard to read because they were based on law and were confusing.  That didn’t matter really, and I give “Take My Hand,” 6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

Cilka's Journey

Cilka’s Journey  by Heather Morris   352 pages

Cecelia “Cilka” Klein in only sixteen years old when she is is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for being of Czech Jewish origin.  Celia is a real person and mentioned several times in author Morris’s previous nivel, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.”

At Auschwitz, Cilka did what she had to do in Auschwitz to stay alive. It was more survival instinct than having someone to live for, as all her family had been murdered by the Nazis. She had been chosen by two SS officers for sex. She endured the repeated rapes, yet was able to use her position to get extra food to her her fellow inmates.

As this story opens, it is late January 1945. The Allies have arrived, freeing all the captives, but not Cilka. No one believed that she did not collaborate willingly with the Germans. She was tried and sentenced to fifteen years on a Russian gulag in Siberia.

The winters are unbearable, the brief summers equally horrendous. She lives in a dorm filled with other women who are there for one reason.  For the officers’ sexual pleasures. Cilka uses her survival skills to help her fellow inmates, earning more and more trust among the guards.

Cilka gets to know some of the women in the “Canada” dorm, the area where jewels and money are gathered from the incoming inmates. She learns how to steal gems and money. She uses them to buy bits of food from two independent contractors.

Cilka’s nursing skills soon have her working in the hospital as a nurse-in-training.  She doesn’t care what she has to do; she’s indoors and not trying to empty the coal buckets brought up from deep beneath the snow-covered earth wil frozen fingers.

The protagonist of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” Lale Sokolov, called Cilka the bravest person he had ever met. And after reading  “Cilka’s Journey,” I agree. Therefore, “Cilka’s Journey”

receives  6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Cilka’s Journey  by Heather Morris   352 pages

Cecelia “Cilka” Klein in only sixteen years old when she is is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for being of Czech Jewish origin.  Celia is a real person and mentioned several times in author Morris’s previous nivel, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.”

At Auschwitz, Cilka did what she had to do in Auschwitz to stay alive. It was more survival instinct than having someone to live for, as all her family had been murdered by the Nazis. She had been chosen by two SS officers for sex. She endured the repeated rapes, yet was able to use her position to get extra food to her her fellow inmates.

As this story opens, it is late January 1945. The Allies have arrived, freeing all the captives, but not Cilka. No one believed that she did not collaborate willingly with the Germans. She was tried and sentenced to fifteen years on a Russian gulag in Siberia.

The winters are unbearable, the brief summers equally horrendous. She lives in a dorm filled with other women who are there for one reason.  For the officers’ sexual pleasures. Cilka uses her survival skills to help her fellow inmates, earning more and more trust among the guards.

Cilka gets to know some of the women in the “Canada” dorm, the area where jewels and money are gathered from the incoming inmates. She learns how to steal gems and money. She uses them to buy bits of food from two independent contractors.

Cilka’s nursing skills soon have her working in the hospital as a nurse-in-training.  She doesn’t care what she has to do; she’s indoors and not trying to empty the coal buckets brought up from deep beneath the snow-covered earth wil frozen fingers.

The protagonist of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” Lale Sokolov, called Cilka the bravest person he had ever met. And after reading  “Cilka’s Journey,” I agree. Therefore, “Cilka’s Journey”

receives  6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Cilka’s Journey  by Heather Morris   352 pages

Cecelia “Cilka” Klein in only sixteen years old when she is is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for being of Czech Jewish origin.  Celia is a real person and mentioned several times in author Morris’s previous nivel, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.”

At Auschwitz, Cilka did what she had to do in Auschwitz to stay alive. It was more survival instinct than having someone to live for, as all her family had been murdered by the Nazis. She had been chosen by two SS officers for sex. She endured the repeated rapes, yet was able to use her position to get extra food to her her fellow inmates.

As this story opens, it is late January 1945. The Allies have arrived, freeing all the captives, but not Cilka. No one believed that she did not collaborate willingly with the Germans. She was tried and sentenced to fifteen years on a Russian gulag in Siberia.

The winters are unbearable, the brief summers equally horrendous. She lives in a dorm filled with other women who are there for one reason.  For the officers’ sexual pleasures. Cilka uses her survival skills to help her fellow inmates, earning more and more trust among the guards.

Cilka gets to know some of the women in the “Canada” dorm, the area where jewels and money are gathered from the incoming inmates. She learns how to steal gems and money. She uses them to buy bits of food from two independent contractors.

Cilka’s nursing skills soon have her working in the hospital as a nurse-in-training.  She doesn’t care what she has to do; she’s indoors and not trying to empty the coal buckets brought up from deep beneath the snow-covered earth wil frozen fingers.

The protagonist of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” Lale Sokolov, called Cilka the bravest person he had ever met. And after reading  “Cilka’s Journey,” I agree. Therefore, “Cilka’s Journey”

receives  6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Cilka’s Journey  by Heather Morris   352 pages

Cecelia “Cilka” Klein in only sixteen years old when she is is sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for being of Czech Jewish origin.  Celia is a real person and mentioned several times in author Morris’s previous nivel, “The Tattooist of Auschwitz.”

At Auschwitz, Cilka did what she had to do in Auschwitz to stay alive. It was more survival instinct than having someone to live for, as all her family had been murdered by the Nazis. She had been chosen by two SS officers for sex. She endured the repeated rapes, yet was able to use her position to get extra food to her her fellow inmates.

As this story opens, it is late January 1945. The Allies have arrived, freeing all the captives, but not Cilka. No one believed that she did not collaborate willingly with the Germans. She was tried and sentenced to fifteen years on a Russian gulag in Siberia.

The winters are unbearable, the brief summers equally horrendous. She lives in a dorm filled with other women who are there for one reason.  For the officers’ sexual pleasures. Cilka uses her survival skills to help her fellow inmates, earning more and more trust among the guards.

Cilka gets to know some of the women in the “Canada” dorm, the area where jewels and money are gathered from the incoming inmates. She learns how to steal gems and money. She uses them to buy bits of food from two independent contractors.

Cilka’s nursing skills soon have her working in the hospital as a nurse-in-training.  She doesn’t care what she has to do; she’s indoors and not trying to empty the coal buckets brought up from deep beneath the snow-covered earth wil frozen fingers.

The protagonist of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz,” Lale Sokolov, called Cilka the bravest person he had ever met. And after reading  “Cilka’s Journey,” I agree. Therefore, “Cilka’s Journey”

receives  6 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.