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241st Virtual Poetry Circle

February 15, 2014 by

Welcome to the 241st Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s book suggested.

Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2014 Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge because there are several levels of participation for your comfort level.

For more poetry, check out the stops on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.  And think about participating in the 2014 National Poetry Month Blog Tour — signups will begin in March.

Today’s poem is from Christina Rossetti:

"I loved you first: but afterwards your love"

Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda. – Dante
Ogni altra cosa, ogni pensier va fore,
E sol ivi con voi rimansi amore. – Petrarca

I loved you first: but afterwards your love
    Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
    Which owes the other most? my love was long,
    And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be –
    Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not ‘mine’ or ‘thine;’
    With separate ‘I’ and ‘thou’ free love has done,
         For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of ‘thine that is not mine;’
         Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

What do you think? Do you read poetry to your Valentine?

Filed Under: virtual poetry circle Tagged With:

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2014 by

I want to wish a Happy Valentine’s Day for my #1 Miami Dolphins fan, my husband Cris. He’s been a rock over the last couple years while I’ve adjusted to motherhood and my new work schedule, etc. I love you and hope we have many more wonderful years together.

Filed Under: announcements Tagged With:

Split This Rock! Poetry Festival Early Bird Rate

February 13, 2014 by

For those interesting in attending the Split This Rock! Poetry Festival next month, don’t miss your opportunity to save on the registration for four days.

The festival is March 27-30, 2014.

Pay just $85 for 4 days of festivities. The early bird rate ends on Feb. 14, 2014.

Check out what panels I’m looking forward to, here.

Filed Under: announcements Tagged With:

Interview with John P. Davidson, author of The Obedient Assassin

February 12, 2014 by

Welcome to the tour stop for John P. Davidson’s The Obedient Assassin.  I’m really looking forward to this novel about an assassin assigned to murder Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Red army who joined the Bolsheviks before the revolution in 1917 and became a major player in the Soviet Union.  I love a good thriller, and this sounds like one of those books that’s sure to deliver.

About the book from GoodReads:

Ramón Mercader was plucked from the front of the Spanish Civil War by the Soviets and conscripted to murder the great in­tellectual Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Bolshevik Revolution who was exiled in the 1920s for opposing Joseph Stalin.

As Ramón is trained for the task and assumes a new identity, he lives a lush life in Paris, befriending Frida Kahlo and other artists of the time. He falls in love with a left-leaning Jewish woman whom he is ordered to seduce as a means of getting at Trotsky.

Today, Davidson is joining us for a little question-and-answer fun; please give him a warm welcome:

1.     What was the most surprising thing you learned from your 10 years of research for the book?

One of the many surprising things I learned was that Trotsky had almost absolute faith in the power of the written word. Knowing that Joseph Stalin was attempting to have him killed, Trotsky was attempting to defend himself by writing a biography of Stalin. This had to set some kind of record for a problematic author-subject relationship.

2.     What drew you to Trotsky that made you decide to center a book around him?

Trotsky was a classical tragic character. He was known as one of the “great minds” of his time, was considered the greatest orator of the Russian language, and was a brilliant writer who, coming from nowhere, rose to the greatest heights only to have everything ripped away because he had slighted Stalin.

3.     The Obedient Assassin is a story full of personal relationships. Which relationship is most interesting to you?

The relationship between Ramon and Sylvia and Ramon was intriguing in that it developed slowly into a genuine romance, but what was perhaps more fascinating and certainly more unusual was what occurred between Ramon and Trotsky toward the end of the book. With little direct contact, from opposite sides of the wall,  they became intensely aware of each other and it seemed that Trotsky all but collaborated with Ramon in his execution. As Sylvia says at the end of the book about panic attacks, he certainly stopped looking.
 
4.     How difficult is it to write fictional dialogue and actions for characters that really existed in history?

Because so many of the characters were speaking a second or third language, they needed to sound a bit foreign and that was fairly easy because I’ve studied German, French, Italian and am fluent in Spanish. The scene in the hospital room at the end of the book when there were so many languages being spoken and simultaneously translated was tricky but the power of the drama was worth the effort.

5.     What draws you to this particular period in history?

The late 1930s were a romantic, dramatic and mysterious time when the world powers were on a collision course, alliances were shifting, and one could cast the story in terms of good and evil.

6.     If you could go back to one period in history in any part of the world, what would you choose?

Paris in the years after the first World War.

7.     Why do you think that few have written about Trotsky’s story?

The Kremlin’s propaganda machine destroyed Trotsky reputation and wrote him out of Soviet history.  There are famous photographs from the Revolution that were airbrushed to remove Trotsky from the picture. Many Russians today don’t know that Trotsky was a revolutionary hero.

8.     If Trotsky had not been assassinated, how do you think the world would be different?

Trotsky provided a voice of reason and a humane face for socialism, but the forces against him were so great, I doubt the world would be any different.
 
9.     How did growing up in a small ranching community in Texas impact your imagination as a child and your desire to write?

We were newcomers and outsiders in a deeply rooted and tightly knit German community. We didn’t speak the language or know all that much about the culture, so that understanding relationships required attention and curiosity.
 
10.  After studying economics and history in college, what inspired you to leave Texas and serve in the Peace Corps?

I wanted to have exotic adventures, speak a foreign, and help less fortunate people.

11.  How did your time in Peru impact your storytelling?

I was the only foreigner and English speaker living in a small desert village. At night, I read Henry James by candle light after the town’s generator was turned off.

What questions would you like answered?

Filed Under: Interviews Tagged With: ,

A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith

February 11, 2014 by

Source: TLC Book Tours and Random House
Hardcover, 352 pages
I am an Amazon Affiliate

A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith is set in the 1930s when the United States was sending the mothers of soldiers overseas to France to the cemeteries where their children had been buried after WWI.  Smith bases her novel on the diary of Colonel Thomas Hammond, who began his career in the military with one of the pilgrimages of the Gold Star Mothers, and he appears as a young principled officer seeking to live up to his family’s illustrious military history.  As these mothers make their journey across the Atlantic to pay respect to their lost sons, Hammond is unaware how much the journey will affect him and these women.  Smith builds the story from a small island town in Maine where Cora Blake struggles alongside her neighbors to make ends meet as the United States wallows in Depression to the deepest emotional hum a human being can experience at a foreign graveside in a country that is still rebuilding after war.

“He was in grave number 72, identified by his dog tags, which were apparently nailed to a stake.  The second card asked that she state her relationship to the deceased and answer yes or no to the question: ‘Do you desire that the remains be brought to the United States?'” (page 15 ARC)

Cora Blake is a young widow, who also has lost her son to a war in Europe, but she’s just beginning to breathe and learn that there could be happiness around the corner with Linwood Moody, a recently widowed soil scientist.  Mrs. McConnell is an Irish-American who knows the struggle of working for the wealthier classes, while Minnie is a Russian-Jewish immigrant who has seen discrimination first hand.  Mrs. Russell is a woman who has been struggling with mental breakdowns for much of her married life, but is determined to see where her son died.  Just as determined as Mrs. Russell, railroad-heir Mrs. Olsen is seeking some form of closure from this trip.  Smith shines in her characterization of these mothers, showing how they are bonded over grief, but also that class distinction and experience can still separate them.  It’s a novel about the struggles for equality that still threatened to separate every American — immigrant or not — but how the great tragedy of war made no such distinctions when taking their sons.

“Cora’s world had expanded so rapidly, but not from the vista.  She remembered what Selma told her in the women’s waiting room in Boston.  ‘You got a lot to learn.’” (page 89)

Smith’s research into the time period, the Gold Star Mother’s tours, and the war itself — including the artillery and tactics used — shines through in the story, the plot, the characters, and the emotional roller coaster these women find themselves on.  Once in France, these women are swept along with military precision, but even the military is not prepared for the will of a mother’s love and her defiance against being told what will placate them the easiest.  They are here for the full experience, they want the truth of their sons’ sacrifices and will accept nothing less.  Along the way, they are treated to the best France has to offer, the eccentricities of Paris artists, the bigotry of Europeans who see Americans as arrogant, and the mysterious ways in which injured soldiers and American reporters, like Griffin Reed, cope.

A Star for Mrs. Blake by April Smith is stunning without being overwrought with emotion, weaving the lives of these women and their children into reader’s minds and souls.  In reflective prose, Smith deftly handles the grief of these women, the tension between grief and duty, and the peace that comes from knowing their loved ones are at rest.  From the cutting edge of facial reconstruction to the remnants of war that could still be found in the weeds of Verdun, Smith has crafted a novel that breathes life into history, ensuring that we never forget the past.

To win a copy of this book, you must be a U.S. resident, age 18 and over.  Leave a comment below by Feb. 14, 2014, at 11:59PM EST.  

4th book (WWI) for the 2014 War Challenge With a Twist.

 

 

 

7th book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

 

 

 

4th book for 2014 European Reading Challenge; this is set in France.

 

 

 

4th book for 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Filed Under: 2014 European Reading Challenge, 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, 2014 War Challenge With a Twist, ARC, challenges, giveaway, historical fiction, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, random house, Read in 2014, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: ,

Mailbox Monday #257

February 10, 2014 by

Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia at To Be Continued, formerly The Printed Page, has gone through a few incarnations from a permanent home with Marcia to a tour of other blogs.

Now, it has its own permanent home at its own blog.

To check out what everyone has received over the last week, visit the blog and check out the links.  Leave yours too.

Also, each week, Leslie, Vicki, and I will share the Books that Caught Our Eye from everyone’s weekly links.

Here’s what I received:

1.  William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, a New Hope by Ian Doescher from Quirk Books for review.

Return once more to a galaxy far, far away with this sublime retelling of George Lucas’s epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. ’Tis a tale told by fretful droids, full of faithful Wookiees and fearstome Stormtroopers, signifying…pretty much everything.

Reimagined in glorious iambic pentameter—and complete with twenty gorgeous Elizabethan illustrations–William Shakespeare’s Star Wars will astound and edify Rebels and Imperials alike. Zounds! This is the book you’re looking for.

2.  The Frangipani Hotel by Violet Kupersmith from TLC Book Tours and Random House for a tour in March.

A beautiful young woman appears fully dressed in an overflowing bathtub at the Frangipani Hotel in Hanoi. A jaded teenage girl in Houston befriends an older Vietnamese gentleman she discovers naked behind a dumpster. A trucker in Saigon is asked to drive a dying young man home to his village. A plump Vietnamese-American teenager is sent to her elderly grandmother in Ho Chi Minh City to lose weight, only to be lured out of the house by the wafting aroma of freshly baked bread. In these evocative and always surprising stories, the supernatural coexists with the mundane lives of characters who struggle against the burdens of the past.

Based on traditional Vietnamese folk tales told to Kupersmith by her grandmother, these fantastical, chilling, and thoroughly contemporary stories are a boldly original exploration of Vietnamese culture, addressing both the immigrant experience and the lives of those who remained behind. Lurking in the background of them all is a larger ghost—that of the Vietnam War, whose legacy continues to haunt us.

3.  Nothing Personal by Mike Offit, unexpectedly from Meryl Moss Media, which I donated to the library sale.

Warren Hament is a bright young man who wanders into a career in finance in the early 1980s. Nothing Personal is the extraordinary story of his rapid ascent toward success, painted against a landscape of temptation and personal discovery. Introduced to the seductive, elite bastions of wealth and privilege, and joined by his gorgeous and ambitious girlfriend, he gets a career boost when his mentor is found dead.

Warren soon finds himself at the center of two murder investigations as a crime spree seemingly focused on powerful finance wizards plagues Wall Street. The blood-soaked trail leads to vast wealth and limitless risk as Warren uncovers unexpected opportunity and unknown dangers at every turn and must face moral dilemmas for which he is wholly unprepared.

4. Bosley Builds a Tree House: Portuguese-English by Tim Johnson for review.

Bosley Bear teams up with his forest friends on this heart-warming adventure of helping each other build an incredible tree house. Encourage themes of teamwork, success and friendship as you teach your child new Portuguese words and phrases and enjoy a beautifully illustrated, fun, wholesome bedtime story with characters that any child will love.

5. Words Are Fun A to I (Sesame Street), which we got from the library sale.

6.  The Tale of Peter Rabbit board book, which we got from the library sale.

7.  What’s up There? (Muppet Babies), which we got from the library sale.

8.  Picture Perfect (Disney Fairies), which we got from the library sale.

What did you receive?

Filed Under: mailbox monday, meme Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Split This Rock! Poetry Festival 2014

February 9, 2014 by

For those who love social causes, engaging with community members, listening to authors and poets, Split This Rock’s 2014 Poetry Festival is not to be missed.

They’ve even extended the early bird fee through Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2014.  Pay just $85 for 4 days of festivities!

When is the festival: March 27-30, 2014

Where:  This year, the festival book fair on March 29 will be held at the Human Rights Campaign Equality Forum!

And the other venues for the panels and events are: Institute for Policy Studies, Grosvenor Auditorium at the National Geographic Museum, The Wilderness Society, and the Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives.

Some of the poets expected, who I’m excited about are:

Among the panels I’m eager to check out:

  • March 27: Rethinking the City:  Poetic Strategies for Renewing Urban Space
  • March 27: The Environment in Crisis: Poetry & Activism
  • March 27: Enough! No More! — readings from and by women in military
  • March 28: Opening Borders: Translating Poetry Across “Enemy” Lines
  • March 28: Re-Imagining the Nature Poem: Post-Pastoral, Post-Colonial, Eco-Spectacle, Eco-Justice Poetry
  • March 28: Women and War/Women and Peace II
  • March 29: From Transgressive to Divine Feminine: Female Poets as Rebels and Miscreants
  • March 29: New Vietnamese Poetry: A Group Reading & Discussion
  • March 29: The Scars of History: Luso Poetry of Witness
  • March 29: evening reading with Yusef Komunyakaa

There are tons of topics and activities, workshops, and readings in the evenings.  Register here.

Need a little more inspiration, check out the Millie Christine video and the Split This Rock 2012 readings.  I had a great time in 2010.

Filed Under: announcements Tagged With:

240th Virtual Poetry Circle

February 8, 2014 by

Welcome to the 240th Virtual Poetry Circle!

Remember, this is just for fun and is not meant to be stressful.

Keep in mind what Molly Peacock’s book suggested.

Look at a line, a stanza, sentences, and images; describe what you like or don’t like; and offer an opinion. If you missed my review of her book, check it out here.

Also, sign up for the 2014 Dive Into Poetry Reading Challenge because there are several levels of participation for your comfort level.

For more poetry, check out the stops on the 2013 National Poetry Month Blog Tour and the 2012 National Poetry Month Blog Tour.  And think about participating in the 2014 National Poetry Month Blog Tour — signups will begin in March.

Today’s poem is from Cornelius Eady from Hardheaded Weather:

Nina's Blues

Your body, hard vowels
In a soft dress, is still.

What you can't know
is that after you died
All the black poets
In New York City
Took a deep breath,
And breathed you out;
Dark corners of small clubs,
The silence you left twitching

On the floors of the gigs
You turned your back on,
The balled-up fists of notes
Flung, angry from a keyboard.

You won't be able to hear us
Try to etch what rose
Off your eyes, from your throat.

Out you bleed, not as sweet, or sweaty,
Through our dark fingertips.
We drum rest
We drum thank you
We drum stay.

What do you think?

Filed Under: virtual poetry circle Tagged With: ,

Sunrise Over Fallujah Read-a-Long Week 1

February 7, 2014 by

Today is the first week of the February read-a-long for Sunrise Over Fallujah by Walter Dean Myers at the War Through the Generations blog for the 2014 War Challenge With a Twist.

The questions are up today, please stop by and offer your thoughts on the first 86 pages of the novel.

Click here for this week’s questions. 

Also if you have reviews for the Gulf Wars, you can link them here.

Filed Under: 2014 War Challenge With a Twist, announcements, challenges Tagged With: , ,

Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich

February 6, 2014 by

Source: TLC Book Tours and William Morrow
Paperback, 368 pages
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich pushes the envelope from the perfectly sculpted Logan Montgomery — personal trainer to the sports elite and their friends who is so worried about his image he never gets too close — to Holly Brennan, an overweight woman who is literally weighed down by her grief and troubled self-esteem.  Mix in Amanda and Chase, a power couple in baseball with a kinky side, plus a dozen or so of Logan’s super model exes, Evanovich has set the stage for an outrageous time once a chance meeting occurs.

“The image on the screen was an amorphous blob.  Flesh stacked upon more flesh oozing all over the couch.  The neon yellow and green from the top of the Funyuns bag between her legs was reflected with unsettling clarity.  She squeezed her thighs together tightly and heard the crunching sound of the Funyuns being pulverized.  Holly leaned her head back on the couch and sighed.”  (page 31)

Holly takes charge of an initially unwelcome opportunity to train with Logan at his private gym, and while she wasn’t prepared for the harsh routines he puts her body through she does little complaining.  True to her strength, she plows through the latest challenge, having learned early on that life is not anywhere close to easy.  Even though his image is illustrious and he is self-absorbed, she falls into a banter that is relaxed and even fun.  They fall into a friendship that leads to new gym-related terms, like swamp ass and Balzac, but it soon becomes apparent to Amanda and Chase that their relationship is deeper than that.

“Logan shot her a look that spoke of extreme tolerance mixed with fatherly reproach.  ‘Telling me I set the incline of a treadmill on Mount Kilimanjaro is not talking.  Asking me if I can see the baby’s head yet when you’re doing abdominal crunches is not meaningful conversation.'” (page 79)

Big Girl Panties by Stephanie Evanovich is laugh-out-loud funny, except for one early sex scene that may be a bit too graphic and too early on.  Holly Brennan is a strong woman who for a time loses herself in her new body and her new romance, but once she uncovers some dirty secrets, she has a choice to make.  Logan, on the other hand, is so concerned with maintaining his image, he grows even more uncomfortable with his romance and how it upsets every preconceived notion he held about himself and his relationships with women.  Body image plays a large role in this novel, but Evanovich handles the theme with delicacy and wit.

***Another great find in the book is the list of when you need to put on your own big girl panties.***

About the Author:

Stephanie Evanovich is a full-fledged Jersey girl who attended New York Conservatory for the Dramatic Arts, performed with several improvisational troupes, and acted in a few small-budget movies, all in preparation for the greatest job she ever had: raising her two sons. Now a full-time writer, she’s an avid sports fan who holds a black belt in tae kwon do. Connect with Stephanie on Facebook.

6th book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

Filed Under: challenges, chicklit, fiction, Harper Collins, New Authors Challenge, Publishers/Publicists, Read in 2014, review copy, reviews, tlc book tours Tagged With: , ,

Nest. Flight. Sky.: On Love and Loss, One Wing at a Time by Beth Kephart

February 5, 2014 by

Source: Purchased for Kindle
eBook, about 34 pages
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Nest. Flight. Sky.: On Love and Loss, One Wing at a Time by Beth Kephart illustrates how the death of the person we’re closest to — oftentimes our mother — sends us out into the world, looking for answers or at least some hope.  Letting go is never about forgetting, while our loved ones may not physically be present any more and all we have is memory — a tricky thing indeed — we have the ability to seek out meaning and hope in the miracles around us.  Anyone who has read Kephart’s books before knows that she loves birds and what they can mean and represent in all their incarnations, but this obsession with birds clearly began with the loss of her mother.

“I work in a square room, watch the world (a garden like an archipelago, a museum of flowering trees) through two wide windows.  I work early in the day, a bare bulb turned on, and I work alone.  But in the months after my mother passed away, much too early, the finches came.  They were still wearing their winter coats.  They favored the crack of dawn.  They held themselves up with the acrobatics of their wings, touched their beaks to my wide windows, and hammered.”

Kephart ties together the memories of her mother’s accident and misdiagnosed and re-diagnosed illness — without naming it because it is unnecessary to do so — with the passionate love of birds held by Genevieve Estelle Jones and Katrina van Grouw.  Like these early scientists, Kephart is exploring the enigma of birds — not so much how they continue to fly and what their eggs and nests look like — but how those former dinosaurs continue to capture the imagination and offer solace to those not too busy to pause.

Readers could imagine glorious photos or illustrations of birds sweeping across the pages, along with Kephart’s words as she remembers the best parts of her mother and the best parts of herself.  Nest. Flight. Sky.: On Love and Loss, One Wing at a Time by Beth Kephart strives to give all those who grieve the hope that there is peace, a peace that we can live with and thrive with, as long as we remember to breathe and be alive.

***This ebook memoir was published by the new venture SheBooks, which published short ebooks for women, by women.  Check out what Beth Kephart had to say.

About the Author:

Beth Kephart is the author of 10 books, including the National Book Award finalist A Slant of Sun; the Book Sense pick Ghosts in the Garden; the autobiography of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, Flow; the acclaimed business fable Zenobia; and the critically acclaimed novels for young adults, Undercover and House of Dance. A third YA novel, Nothing but Ghosts, is due out in June 2009. And a fourth young adult novel, The Heart Is Not a Size, will be released in March 2010. “The Longest Distance,” a short story, appears in the May 2009 HarperTeen anthology, No Such Thing as the Real World.

Kephart is a winner of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fiction grant, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Leeway grant, a Pew Fellowships in the Arts grant, and the Speakeasy Poetry Prize, among other honors. Kephart’s essays are frequently anthologized, she has judged numerous competitions, and she has taught workshops at many institutions, to all ages. In the fall of 2009, Kephart will teach the advanced nonfiction workshop at the University of Pennsylvania.  Check out her blog.

Filed Under: memoir, purchased, Read in 2014, reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

No Surrender Soldier by Christine Kohler

February 4, 2014 by

Source: Borrowed from Anna
Hardcover, 208 pages
I am an Amazon Affiliate

No Surrender Soldier by Christine Kohler is a well researched debut novel for young adults, though probably on the older end of the age range 11+ given the graphic pig slaughtering and mature themes.  Set in 1972 during the Vietnam War, it still has roots in WWII.  During WWII, the Japanese invaded and many of the inhabitants of Guam were used and abused by their captors, particularly the women.  Fifteen year-old Kiko Chargalauf inadvertently learns about his own family’s history with the Japanese invaders.  It’s more than he can take when he stumbles upon a straggler in the boonies on Guam behind his house, as he tries to separate reality from anger when he realizes the crimes Japanese soldiers committed against Guam’s residents.

“Stragglers are what we call Japanese soldiers who never surrendered after World War II.  As far as I was concerned, my parents used fear of stragglers as an excuse, like some people use the boogie man, when they didn’t want me to go into the boonies.  I shook my head.  ‘No straggler would last that long.'” (page 29 ARC)

At its heart, the novel is a coming of age story.  Kiko is struggling with his new responsibilities at the family tourist shop, as his brother is overseas fighting in Vietnam as a pilot.  But he also has become his grandfather’s babysitter as the old man’s dementia gets worse, transporting him to those terrifying days in WWII.  As Kiko struggles to become a man and still enjoy his childhood, he’s forced to grow up more quickly than he’d like — fighting every step of the way.

On the flip side, readers will see the internal struggles of Lance Corporal of the Japanese Imperial Army Isamu Seto as he not only scavenges for food, jumps at every noise, and tries to stay hidden from military forces that could imprison him.  Tenacity and courage bring Kiko, Seto, and the grandfather together as the past is forgiven and a mutual respect grows between them.  No Surrender Soldier by Christine Kohler is about perseverance, forgiveness, and growing up, but it’s also about how war threatens and shapes all of us, even those who are not directly fighting in it.

About the Author:

Christine Kohler is the author of NO SURRENDER SOLDIER. She is a former journalist, teacher and writing instructor for the Institute of Children’s Literature (ICL).

3rd book (WWII and Vietnam War) for the 2014 War Challenge With a Twist.

 

 

 

5th book for 2014 New Author Challenge.

 

 

 

3rd book for 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge

Filed Under: 2014 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, 2014 War Challenge With a Twist, ARC, borrowed copy, challenges, historical fiction, New Authors Challenge, Read in 2014, reviews Tagged With: , ,