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After Alice by Gregory Maguire

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Paperback, 304 pgs.
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After Alice by Gregory Maguire is a bit like being at the tea party with the Mad Hatter.  Everything is topsy-turvy in the real world and in Wonderland, but the only difference is that readers are familiar with the characters in Wonderland.  Ada, a girl who has a steel corset to keep her erect, finds herself falling down the rabbit hole after Alice.  While she spends a lot of time looking for Alice and meeting the characters her friend has already met and interacted with, she makes little impact on the Wonderland world and it seems to have little impact on her until nearly 200 pages into the story.

Maguire makes a point of highlighting Ada’s disability, but when she seems to freely wander about Wonderland without the aid of her corset, Ada, herself, does not appear to reflect on that much.  Readers could deduce that 10-year-old Ada is free of the constraints of society, the vicarage, and proper behavior once she sheds this corset, but there is little time spent on that.

“‘Perhaps I could join your troupe.  I should like to go to the garden party, too,’ said Ada. ‘I am hunting for a friend, you see.  I’m afraid that she may be lost.’

‘She’s no more lost than Paradise,’ said the Tin Bear.  Everyone looked at him. ‘Do you think even Paradise Lost could find itself in this fog? Really.'” (pg. 126)

There are a great many references to Noah’s Ark, Paradise Lost, and the like, and while readers can presume they are meant to be amusing in the land of wonder, they tend to fall a bit flat as there’s no real context or build-up to their usage.  For much of the novel, readers wonder why they are transitioning from the present to Wonderland — following Ada who is following Alice and following the governess and Alice’s sister, Lydia.

Although framing stories are often irksome, in this case, a frame might have improved the narrative here.  Allowing Ada to be the beginning and the end, while we examined what life was like without Alice in England.  However, even that would have made for a mostly uneventful story.  After Alice by Gregory Maguire is really just a case of a story chasing its own tale to no avail.

RATING: Couplet

About the Author:

Gregory Maguire is the New York Times bestselling author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister; Lost; Mirror Mirror; and the Wicked Years, a series that includesWicked, Son of a Witch, A Lion Among Men, and Out of Oz. Now a beloved classic, Wicked is the basis for a blockbuster Tony Award–winning Broadway musical. Maguire has lectured on art, literature, and culture both at home and abroad. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.  Find out more about Maguire at his website and follow him on Facebook.

The Girl from the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor

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Paperback, 448 pgs.
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The Girl from the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor is a dazzling dream of a young maid who worships the starlight in the dresses of London actresses on stage and loves to dance.  Dolly Lane has started from a small town and when her childhood love returns from WWI a broken man who no longer remembers her, she makes a tough choice to follow her own dreams.  Told from three points of view — Dolly, Teddy, and Loretta — readers are given a wide view of how lives were changed by war.  Gaynor’s leading ladies are different but similar.  Dolly wants to be in the limelight and Loretta has achieved that dream, and how these ladies lives become entwined is a stroke of chance.

“He pours milk into his tea. ‘I’m not that bad.  Am I?’
‘Yes, you are. Honestly, darling, sometimes it’s like spending time with a dead trout.  And you used to be such tremendous fun.'” (pg. 35 ARC)

Loretta is a brave woman who takes her life and makes something of it, living her life as she chooses. She becomes a famous actress and spurns the trappings of her family’s expectations. Dolly, on the other hand, has dreams but is waffling as to how to achieve them. She leaves the employment of a rich household to become a maid at The Savoy in the hope that she will meet someone to change her course, but what she doesn’t realize is that she must muster up the courage to make the most of even innocuous meetings.

“Instead, I tug at the counterpane on my bed, straightening the creases I’ve made by sitting on it.  A habit of mine.  If I can’t untangle the knots in my heart, it seems that my life must be spent untangling everything else, setting things straight, making neat all that has been messed up.'” (pg. 44 ARC)

War is hammer that shatters the lives of those soldiers directly involved, but the reverberations travel far beyond the front lines, crippling families thousands of miles away and showing those inspired to help the wounded and others that their selfish concerns are shallow.  Gaynor has meted out the historical details so well, readers will become immersed in this glamorous and mundane world — the two sides of the coin between the dreamers and those who live in the spotlight.  The Girl from the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor reminds us that dreaming is not enough; we must learn to reach for those dreams and bring them to life.

RATING: CINQUAIN

About the Author:

Hazel Gaynor’s 2014 debut novel The Girl Who Came Home—A Novel of the Titanicwas a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. A Memory of Violets is her second novel.

Hazel writes a popular guest blog ‘Carry on Writing’ for national Irish writing website writing.ie and contributes regular feature articles for the site, interviewing authors such as Philippa Gregory, Sebastian Faulks, Cheryl Strayed, Rachel Joyce and Jo Baker, among others.

Hazel was the recipient of the 2012 Cecil Day Lewis award for Emerging Writers and was selected by Library Journal as one of Ten Big Breakout Authors for 2015. She appeared as a guest speaker at the Romantic Novelists’ Association and Historical Novel Society annual conferences in 2014.

Originally from Yorkshire, England, Hazel now lives in Ireland with her husband and two children.

Find out more about Hazel at her website, and connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

United States of Books: The Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace

Source: Public Library
Paperback, 736 pgs.
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The Betsy-Tacy Treasury by Maud Hart Lovelace, which is the first four books in this 10 book series, was praised by Entertainment Weekly as “a rosy remembrance of a region already known for its niceness.”  My daughter and I read these together over many weeks, reading little more than a chapter every couple of evenings.

Betsy-Tacy is the first book in the series, and young readers are introduced to five-year-old Betsy who lives in Deep Valley, Minnesota.  She lives in a small mill town at the end of Hill Street, but she’s soon to have a new neighbor, as a new family moves into the house across the street.  My daughter was thrilled to hear about a girl her age, and she was even more excited when I told her that there were pencil-like sketches inside for her to visualize what we were reading.  Transitioning from only picture books to chapter books can be hard, especially for kids who love visuals.  Betsy soon has a new friend, Tacy, and they share big imaginary adventures together before her baby sister arrives and before they even meet Tib, whose family is from Milwaukee and live in the chocolate-colored house they covet.  Entertainment Weekly‘s assessment of a “rosy” picture of a “nice” little town is highly accurate, and it’s clear that this story takes place some time ago before many worried about strangers, criminals, or had cars, cellphones, and televisions.  Imagination was a commodity that children needed in large supply.  This is not to say that Betsy, Tacy, and Tib do not get into trouble.

Rating: Cinquain

Betsy-Tacy and Tib is the second book, and the girls are now eight years old.  It becomes clear that even though these books were written during a time when women were supposed to be mothers and wives, these girls have bigger dreams.  Betsy is a storyteller and she seems to have dreams of writing books, while Tacy wants to be a mother to a number of kids, just as her mother is.  Tib is torn.  To be an architect/engineer, mother, dancer, or something else.  When kids think about what they want to be when they grow up, their dreams are big and seem to be out of reach.  They are fantasies, like many of the stories these girls create in this book for Tib’s Aunt Dolly and themselves.  My daughter is riveted by these books and the fun and trouble these girls get into, from visiting the Mirror Palace to cutting chunks of their hair off to put in lockets.  These books remind me of the good old days when dreams were interchangeable and wonderful.

Rating: Cinquain

Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill is the third book and the girls are now age 10.  It’s great how accurate Maud Hart Lovelace captures the competition between young kids when it comes to celebrating birthdays and feeling left out when others have birthday parties and they do not.  But, ultimately, everything turns out well between Betsy, Tacy, and Tib, only to have a quarrel between Betsy and Tacy and their older sisters over who will become queen.  This book has a lot in it about conflict resolution, which younger kids can definitely use as friendships grow and change, as well as in their relationships with siblings.  My daughter enjoyed this one, but was a little unsure of the hubbub about kings and queens, even though she is an avid fan of princesses.  I liked the historical details about the Syrian immigrants and foreign affairs involving the King of Spain, as well as a tidbit about the current president being Theodore Roosevelt.  However, there are some “old-fashioned” ideas about immigrants and other cultures here that might need further explanation.

Rating: Quatrain

Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown is the fourth book, and at age 12, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib are a little too old for my daughter.  She lost interest in this book series with this book, as their adventures downtown and their prodding of Winona to take them to see the play Uncle Tom’s Cabin did not resonate with her.  She’s more interested in make-believe games and stories, and while these girls act as girls probably do at this age, manipulating a classmate is not a lesson I’d like my daughter to learn.  It’s also interesting from an adult perspective to see how times have changed — a prized possession for one of the girls is a beer calendar!  But here, we also see Betsy grow up and take an adventure to the new library on her own.  While she apprehensive, she’s happy to be on her own and she thrives in the books she finds and reads, but also in the attention she seems to receive from others about her own writing.  It’s wonderful to see her parents support her writing/art.  It’s a lesson that is often not passed on today, as kids are tested and too focused on subjects that will net them lucrative careers.

Rating: Tercet

Average rating for all 4 books: 4.25

About the Author:

Maud Hart Lovelace was born on April 25, 1892, in Mankato, Minnesota. She was the middle of three children born to Thomas and Stella (Palmer) Hart. Her sister, Kathleen, was three years older, and her other sister, Helen, was six years younger. “That dear family” was the model for the fictional Ray family. Maud’s birthplace was a small house on a hilly residential street several blocks above Mankato’s center business district. The street, Center Street, dead-ended at one of the town’s many hills. When Maud was a few months old, the Hart family moved two blocks up the street to 333 Center.

Shortly before Maud’s fifth birthday a “large merry Irish family” moved into the house directly across the street. Among its many children was a girl Maud’s age, Frances, nicknamed Bick, who was to be Maud’s best friend and the model for Tacy Kelly. Tib’s character was based on another playmate, Marjorie (Midge) Gerlach, who lived nearby in a large house designed by her architect father. Maud, Bick, and Midge became lifelong friends. Maud once stated that the three couldn’t have been closer if they’d been sisters.

MinUSofBooks

The Pioneer Woman Cooks Dinnertime by Ree Drummond

Source: Public Library
Hardcover, 400 pgs.
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The Pioneer Woman Cooks Dinnertime by Ree Drummond is another great cookbook with easy to follow ingredient lists and steps.  My favorite part of these cookbooks is the step-by-step photos she adds for each part of the process.  One thing I would love, that doesn’t seem to be in these cookbooks, is a guide on how to pare down the ingredients and recipes to meet the food needs of a smaller family.  While my family will eat leftovers, there is a limit to how long they will keep and how much my family can eat.

For this cookbook, we had our daughter choose the recipes of what looked good to her, and we tried them out.  Among the recipes we tried were the Sausage, Potato, and Kale Soup (a dish similar to a spicy Portuguese soup I make and the Oliver Garden Zuppa Toscana soup); the Red, White, and Green Stuffed Shells; Shrimp Scampi; and the Pasta Puttanesca.

The soup was the easiest to make and the leftovers went quickly, mostly because I love soup.  Her recipe was very close to the Olive Garden version, so if you love that soup, this is a recipe for you to try at home.  The stuffed shells are also easy to make, though they can take a lot of time because the stuffing process will depend on the flexibility of your shells — which you don’t want too flexible because they’ll be mushy.  My daughter and husband really enjoyed these, which is a win for me since they both hate spinach.

Shrimp Scampi is probably the easiest of the recipes, next to the soup, but this one was not liked by either my husband or daughter for some reason.  Since eating this, which has wine in it and a lot of garlic, my daughter has refused to eat shrimp, something she normally loves.  In my case, I had to eat all the leftovers, but got sick of eating them because there was just too much.  Pasta Puttanesca is another recipe that did not go over as well as the first two, even though I eliminated the anchovies and olives, both of which are not liked here.  I love olives, but the other family members do not.  To me, without those ingredients, or at least something to replace them, the pasta was bland tasting.  My daughter, however, loved the tomatoes.  She ate those right up.

The Pioneer Woman Cooks Dinnertime by Ree Drummond is another cookbook I’ll have to buy at some point to try the recipes, since this one has to head back to the library.  I could just take it out again, but I like to make notations in my cookbooks about changes I make or things I substitute.

RATING: Quatrain

Other Reviews:

About the Author:

Ree Drummond began blogging in 2006 and has built an award-winning website, where she shares recipes, showcases her photography, and documents her hilarious transition from city life to ranch wife. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling cookbook The Pioneer Woman Cooks. Ree lives on a working cattle ranch near Pawhuska, Oklahoma, with her husband, Ladd; their four kids; their beloved basset hound; and lots of other animals.

Yellow Brick War by Danielle Paige (audio)

Source: Purchased
Audible, 8+ hours
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Yellow Brick War by Danielle Paige, narrated by Devon Sorvari, is the third part of this young adult series in an alternative world to the one we grew up with in Oz. This is a series that would be hard to follow without having read the first two books in the series — Dorothy Must Die and The Wicked Will Rise.

Amy Gumm finds herself back in Kansas, but she’s not alone.  The Wicked are with her as well, and she must find something to help get them back to Oz before Dorothy destroys everything.  This is Amy’s worst nightmare — returning to high school where she’s picked on by her peers and her mother is too drunk to even care where she is or if her homework is finished.  However, the witches show her that things have changed since her disappearance, and her mother is now sober and her former bullies are nicer now that they’ve been ostracized.

In this installment, the action is much slower as Amy reunites with her mother and the peers that once tortured her.  She feels just as out of place here as she did in Oz, but at least in Oz she could use magic and had a purpose.  She meets up with the former quarterback and his former girlfriend — Amy’s nemesis — and they strive to uncover the truth about the real Dorothy from Kansas.  It’s clear that Dorothy’s story was real and that no one believed her, but there is something magic still hidden in Kansas, and Amy must find it.

Yellow Brick War by Danielle Paige, narrated by Devon Sorvari, is a unique retelling of the Oz story, and readers will enjoy the characters and plot twists.  However, the dangling cliffhanger means there is sure to be another book in this series.  When the action abruptly ends, readers can be frustrated, especially in the case here where there is a big question mark over everyone’s fate.

Rating: Tercet

About the Author:

Danielle Paige is a graduate of Columbia University and the author of Dorothy Must Die and its digital prequel novellas, No Place Like Oz and The Witch Must Burn. Before turning to young adult literature, she worked in the television industry, where she received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys. She currently lives in New York City.

The Secrets of Flight by Maggie Leffler

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Paperback, 368 pgs.
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The Secrets of Flight by Maggie Leffler is a stunning mystery that unravels piece by piece, and readers will first meet Mary Browning, an elderly woman in a writer’s group.  She believes she sees an apparition of her sister, Sarah, as a young lady walks into their public writing group.  This vision prompts her memories to resurface, and with the help of this young transcriptionist, she begins again on her memoir.  Leffler deftly weaves between the past and present, creating a multi-layered story that will capture not only the nostalgia of a former airplane pilot during WWII but also the immediacy of a young woman’s search for herself among the detritus of family drama.  Her characters resonate off of one another, like echoes of the past pushing forward the lives of the present into the future.  This ripple effect builds throughout the novel, until the final mystery is revealed.

“But my greatest fear of all was not having a voice of my own.” (pg. 5 ARC)

We all fear losing ourselves and not having a voice.  We are individuals in search of ourselves, but we also are sisters, mothers, daughters, and friends, among other roles that we play.  These connections can help us breathe life into our passions and desires, or they can stifle them.  The trick is to balance the needs and expectations of others with our own without hurting ourselves or those we care most about.

“… I learned how to squeeze my face closed and let myself soundlessly shudder, imagining my tears deep inside, dripping off my organs.” (pg. 31 ARC)

Mary has lived her life, much of it on her own terms, and while she has had a hard time compromising, she was able to do it for love, even to her own detriment.  When WWII was in full swing, she left home to do what she loved even as many told her she shouldn’t, and when she fell in love, she made a sacrifice that many would now see as unnecessary without having lived with the fear of persecution.

Very rarely is there a book that can equally make emotions soar and crash, taking readers on a complete journey wrought with obstacles and choices that you can only imagine facing.  For Mary Browning to have survived them and to have created a satisfying, but not ideal life, is nothing short of miraculous — much like when a heavy metal plane takes to the air with the birds and clouds.  The Secrets of Flight by Maggie Leffler is equal parts coming of age story, WWII historical romance, and mystery, and it is so well balanced and amazing, readers will be left spent at the end of the runway.

RATING: Cinquain

About the Author:

Maggie Leffler is an American novelist and a family medicine physician. A native of Columbia, Maryland, she graduated from the University of Delaware and volunteered with AmeriCorps before attending St. George’s University School of Medicine. She practices medicine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband and sons. The Secrets of Flight is her third novel.

Find out more about Maggie at her website, and connect with her on Facebook.

The Seven Ages by Louise Glück

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 80 pgs.
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The Seven Ages by Louise Glück is a book about transformation and, by extension, aging and death — the battle between faith and the fear of mortality.  The title opens with a cryptic tale of a human who arrives on Earth even before the Garden of Eden, when it is just dust.  The narrator loves it all the same, even in its barrenness, but like many humans she wants to possess it.  How do you hold onto something that changes and is going to continue changing? The short answer is: you can’t.  Except maybe in a dream but even memories change.

Throughout the book, Glück touches, tastes, and experiences a variety of things, but in “The Sensual World,” she says, “I caution you as I was never cautioned:// you will never let go, you will never be satiated./You will be damaged and scarred, you will continue to hunger.//” (pg. 7)  We have entered that garden and we have tasted the forbidden fruits, and even as we are punished, we still want more.  We cannot get enough sensory input, which leads to emotional attachments that continue even as we age, even if they are not acted upon.

In “Birthday,” the narrator remembers “that age. Riddled with self-doubt, self-loathing,/and at the same time suffused/with contempt for the communal, the ordinary;…” (pg. 20) The narrator is on the outside at this party, watching those who are wrapped up in making friends and making connections, but also vividly aware of the solitary member who prefers their own counsel.  Here again, the narrator cautions that in silence it is difficult to “test one’s ideas.  Because they are not ideas, they are the truth.//”  She speaks of this again in “From a Journal”: “how ignorant we all are most of the time,/seeing things/only from one vantage, like a sniper.//” (pg. 25)

Once we come away from ourselves and view the world differently, usually after years of a narrow focus, we come to realize that we want more time.  We want “to extend those days, to be inseparable from them./ So that a few hours could take up a lifetime.//” (“The Destination”, pg. 28)  The Seven Ages by Louise Glück is an exploration of aging through the lens of an observer, someone who has experienced life and who has separated herself from it when necessary.  Things we see are not as we expect, things we obtain do not satiate our appetites, and in our haste to achieve things, we break them.  Human frailty cannot be escaped, and we cannot return to our youth.  Glück attests to these stages and says that appreciating what has come before is hard, especially when we are hungry for more and have run out of time.

Rating: Quatrain

About the Poet:

Louise Glück was born in New York City of Hungarian Jewish heritage and grew up on Long Island. Glück attended Sarah Lawrence College and later Columbia University.

She is the author of twelve books of poetry, including: “A Village Life” (2009); Averno (2006), which was a finalist for The National Book Award; The Seven Ages (2001); Vita Nova (1999), which was awarded The New Yorker’s Book Award in Poetry; Meadowlands (1996); The Wild Iris (1992), which received the Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award; Ararat (1990), which received the Library of Congress’s Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry. Louise Glück has also published a collection of essays, Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (1994), which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction.

The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige (audio)

Source: Purchased
Audiobook, 9+ hours
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The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige, narrated by Devon Sorvari, is book two of a series, and this is a series you’ll want to read in order. (check out my review of Dorothy Must Die)

Amy Gumm is battered and bruised and concerned about The Revolutionary Order of the Wicked, particularly about the safety of Nox, a brooding young warlock. Even though she’s failed in her mission to kill Dorothy, she is determined to complete her collection of the objects controlling the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion.

She’s still unsure who she should trust in the world of Oz, a place that’s full of fluctuating magic.  Left on her own, she finds herself face-to-face with distrustful wingless monkeys who refuse to get involved in the war against Dorothy.  She has little choice but to strike out on her own and find Nox and figure out how best to take care of Dorothy and the evil powers that rule the Emerald City.  As she enters the land of forgetfulness and digs deep to find her true self, she must struggle to keep the dark magic at bay.

Unlike the previous installment, Paige has created a very fast-paced book that provides the right balance between backstory and action, as well as character development and description.  Amy is the main focus, and as she comes into her own, readers will cheer her on, even when she’s making decisions that may not have the best outcome.  Readers will want to root for her.  Even as she still has doubts about her abilities and her role in the war, she’s coming to terms with her place in it and she’s taking action.

The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige, narrated by Devon Sorvar, does end on a cliffhanger of sorts, but readers won’t mind since they’ll be even more invested in Amy’s story by the end of this second book.

Rating: Quatrain

About the Author:

Danielle Paige is a graduate of Columbia University and the author of Dorothy Must Die and its digital prequel novellas, No Place Like Oz and The Witch Must Burn. Before turning to young adult literature, she worked in the television industry, where she received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys. She currently lives in New York City.

Hush Hush by Laura Lippman (audio)

Source: Public Library
Audiobook, 9 CDs
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Hush Hush by Laura Lippman, narrated by Jan Maxwell, is the 12th book in the Tess Monaghan series, but it’s not necessary to read these books in order.

As a new mother, Monaghan, a private detective, struggles with her ability to parent well, and she’s often her harshest critic.  Her concerns about her own parenting skills are the backdrop to the case she’s working involving the “baby killer” Melisandre Harris Dawes, who left her two-month-old daughter locked in a car while she sat nearby on the shores of the Patapsco River. She was found not guilty by reason of criminal insanity, but when she’s back from a stint abroad to avoid the press and tries to reconnect with her two daughters and film a reunion documentary, the process is much harder than she expects, especially as her ex-husband strives to keep her out of their lives.

Baltimore comes alive in this novel, as Lippman is careful to supply readers with both the good and bad elements of the city. As Monaghan struggles with her new role as a mother and to pay the bills, she and her partner Sandy Sanchez have little choice by to take up her mentor and close friend Tyner Gray’s offer to assess Melisandre’s security needs. In the midst of this, people end up dying, and the finger starts pointing at her client.  Jan Maxwell is an excellent narrator, particularly when she has to narrate the dialogue for a very manipulative and closed off woman.

Hush Hush by Laura Lippman, narrated by Jan Maxwell, was a twisted tale that will have mothers everywhere praising their own parenting abilities in comparison to Melisandre.  Monaghan, like most new mothers, must juggle new responsibilities with their jobs, but at least her partner provides some help, as do her parents and daycare.  She’s a brilliant woman who struggles to do it all, but in many ways, the book is a cautionary tale.  Mothers should not have to do it all, and they should be able to ask for help and rely on others.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Laura Lippman was a reporter for twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began writing novels while working fulltime and published seven books about “accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001. Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.

Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia, Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald and the San Antonio Light.

Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in 1989 and has lived there since. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr., a Sun editorial writer who retired in 1995 but continues to freelance for several newspapers, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a former Baltimore City school librarian. Her sister, Susan, is a local bookseller.

Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War by Jessica Brockmole, Hazel Gaynor, Evangeline Holland, Marci Jefferson, Kate Kerrigan, Jennifer Robson, Heather Webb, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig

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Paperback, 368 pgs.
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Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War by Jessica Brockmole, Hazel Gaynor, Evangeline Holland, Marci Jefferson, Kate Kerrigan, Jennifer Robson, Heather Webb, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig is a collection of short stories set during World War I, the Great War. Love is at the crux of each story, whether its a lost love or the love of a child lost to war, and these men and women are tested by the ravages of combat.  These writers have a firm grasp of the subject and readers will never question their knowledge of WWI or the human condition.  From a childless widow of German heritage living in France in “Hour of the Bells” by Heather Webb to a young wife left in Paris alone and estranged from her husband’s family in “After You’ve Gone” by Evangeline Holland, people are torn apart by war in many ways and those who are left behind to pick up the pieces are weary and forlorn.  They must pick up their skirts or what remains of their lives and move on, despite the pull of the past, the future that will never be, or the emptiness of their homes.

“But the trick was not to care too much.  To care just enough.” (from “An American Airman in Paris” by Beatriz Williams, pg. 244 ARC)

“Sixty years gone like a song, like a record on a gramophone, with the needle left to bump against the edge, around and around, the music gone.” (from “The Record Set Straight” by Lauren Willig, pg. 44 ARC)

These characters care, they care a lot, and even after the war is long over, the past still haunts them, at least until they are able to make amends or at least set the record straight.  How do you get past the loss of loved ones, do you wallow? do you seek revenge? how do you hold on to hope? Sometimes the war doesn’t leave a physical reminder, but a mental and emotional one — scars that are harder to trace and heal.  These stories are packed full of emotion and characters who will leave readers weeping and praising the hope they find.

Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War by Jessica Brockmole, Hazel Gaynor, Evangeline Holland, Marci Jefferson, Kate Kerrigan, Jennifer Robson, Heather Webb, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig takes readers on a journey through and over the trenches and to the many sides in a war — crossing both national and familial borders.

Rating: Cinquain

Connect with the Authors:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m counting this as my Fiction Book Set During WWI.

 

The Beautiful Possible by Amy Gottlieb

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Paperback, 336 pgs.
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The Beautiful Possible by Amy Gottlieb will immerse readers in the religious fervor of Judaism, which is both beautiful in its confinement and infuriating in its inability to be more flexible. Opening with Maya Kerem reminiscing about her parents, the novel seems as though it’s going to be a love story about her parents, but then, readers are introduced to German Jew Walter Westhaus, whose life is shattered one night by the Nazis in 1938.  The tragedy he experiences in his apartment pushes him into blind action, leaving his homeland to board a boat and travel not to Palestine as he and his fiance dreamed but to Bombay, as he follows a man with a brown felt hat.

“They are alone for four days and their recognizable lives become obliterated, irrelevant.  For both of them, this time is not joyful, but necessary.” (pg. 199 ARC)

Despite the complications and the religious context, the story of Walter is one that is familiar, a man who becomes lost in the face of trauma and who wanders to find meaning in what’s left of his life.  The man with the brown felt hat befriends him among the spices and dreams of a different life for Walter.  He begs Walter to come to America and become a scholar of religion and faith.  This is a friendship held at a distance, a connection that allows Walter to meet Sol Kerem and Rosalie Wachs, with whom he will be connected in the most beautiful and impossible ways — creating a deep love and braided life that is beneath the surface of all that they are.

The poetry of the Torah and the other texts examined in Rabbinical school by Walter and Sol mimic the beautiful relationship between Sol, Rosalie, and Walter, an impossible braid that cannot be broken because if it were, all strength would be lost.  While Gottlieb’s characters are each lost in their own way, when they come together, they find the strength and faith they need to keep going, even when they are miles and countries apart.  Like the intertwined relationships of the novel, Gottlieb weaves in religious texts and rituals in a way that is seamless and artistic, making beautiful the impossible.

“…the secret of these weeks will resound in my bones as private music that only I will be able to hear.” (g. 70 ARC)

The Beautiful Possible by Amy Gottlieb is a rapture where decisions are not analyzed but made, and where love is the driving force of faith.  Even in death, a story can live on, unraveling its intricate and closely held secrets for all to behold.  It’s a mystical take on the average lives we lead and how they compare to the dreams of something more that we harbor in locked places.

Rating: Cinquain

About the Author:

Amy Gottlieb’s fiction and poetry have been published in many literary journals and anthologies, and she is the recipient of fellowships from the Bronx Council on the Arts and the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education. She lives in New York City.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m calling this my A Fiction Book set during WWII.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (audio)

Source: Public Library
Audio, 6 CDs
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Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, narrated by Reese Witherspoon, was a book that was anticipated by many and vilified by others, and I honestly had no desire to read it because of the hype.  (I only picked up this audio because it was available at the library and I needed a new one.)  Jean Louise Finch, known as Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, has returned to Maycomb, Ala., and her aging father, Atticus.  As the civil rights movement gains speed and the NAACP continues to push for rights, the South balks at integration and federal government interference.

Witherspoon is the perfect choice in a narrator for the story, and it is not just about her ability to play Southern characters.  She provides the right amount of empathy, emotion, and detachment needed by each of the characters to make them wholly different from one another, and yet still share similar experiences but view them differently.  There are differences between this novel (which is said to be Lee’s first) and the previously published book (TKAM), and those differences can be stark, especially when there are outcomes in the previously published book that go very differently here. Those are things an editor should have attended to before publishing, but are not the main crux of this story.

This is not about the rape case that Atticus defended, this is about us as children and how we generally worship our parents in one way or another, only to be disappointed that they are humans and not gods.  It’s a book about a young girl who worshiped her father, took in everything he said with little examination, and continued to apply it to her daily living.  Scout has held her father to an impossible standard, and when she returns to find him at a council meeting — one in which she would expect him to protest not take part in — her images are shattered, and she is forced to not only reconcile what she thought she knew about her father but what she knew about herself.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, narrated by Reese Witherspoon, is a novel about finding the courage and strength to change and to help those around you do the same. The south was in the midst of heavy transitions when Scout returns, and while she was “blind” to the hearts of those around her, even when her eyes are opened to their motivations, it is clear she still has a lot to learn.  The end seems to leave things wide open and unresolved in a way, like Scout’s journey is not finished.

About the Author:

Harper Lee, known as Nelle, was born in the Alabama town of Monroeville, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served on the state legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and enjoyed the friendship of her schoolmate and neighbor, the young Truman Capote.

After graduating from high school in Monroeville, Lee enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery (1944-45), and then pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama (1945-50), pledging the Chi Omega sorority. While there, she wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, “Ramma-Jamma”. Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford, England, before moving to New York in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC. Lee continued as a reservation clerk until the late 50s, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York to her family home in Alabama to care for her father.

Having written several long stories, Harper Lee located an agent in November 1956. The following month at the East 50th townhouse of her friends Michael Brown and Joy Williams Brown, she received a gift of a year’s wages with a note: “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.” Within a year, she had a first draft. Working with J. B. Lippincott & Co. editor Tay Hohoff, she completed To Kill a Mockingbird in the summer of 1959. Published July 11, 1960, the novel was an immediate bestseller and won great critical acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. It remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies in print. In 1999, it was voted “Best Novel of the Century” in a poll by the Library Journal.

About the Narrator:

Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon, known professionally as Reese Witherspoon, is an American actress and producer. She began her career as a child actress, starring in The Man in the Moon in 1991. Witherspoon quickly established herself as a talented actress in films such as Pleasantville (1998), Election (1999) and Cruel Intentions (1999). While filming Cruel Intentions. Behind the camera, Witherspoon launched her own production company Pacific Standard in 2012, which was behind the 2014 films Gone Girl and Wild. The latter, based on the memoir by Cheryl Strayed, stars Witherspoon as a woman who takes to the road after the death of her mother. Witherspoon has earned raves for the role, receiving Oscar, Golden Globe, and SAG Awards nominations.