Looking for Jane touched me in so many ways. Heather Marshall did a great job with this story of motherhood and everything that it entails. She introduces us to Angela Creighton, Dr. Evelyn Taylor, and Nancy Mitchell. Each of their story lines begin disconnected, but poignant in their own lives. In 2017, Angela and her wife are going through invitro, trying to have a baby. In 1960, Evelyn is an unwed teenager, sent to St. Agnes, to hid her baby from the world and give it up for adoption. In 1979, Nancy is a young adult meeting her cousin who plans to have an illegal abortion. All these women’s stories…
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by Nikki Erlick
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by Harriet Cannon Lizbeth Gordon’s husband doesn’t come home one day. He dies in a one-car auto accident. That’s not the shocking part. He had a hidden gambling addiction and accumulated a large pile of debt. At least it was hidden from Lizbeth. She’s left with only answers and empty banking accounts, so she put the family home up for sell, helped her two sons return to college, and headed for the family cottage on Folly Island, SC. She needed a quiet place. This started Lizbeth’s search for healing and understanding that leads her along a winding road ending in the discovery of the long-lost branch of the Gordon family.…
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by Diane Chamberlain I’ve been trying to get to this book for a long time. I love to read Diane Chamberlain’s books. I love how she weaves her stories with details that reveal what’s coming, how she gives you the woman’s point of view, and how she solves her mysteries by the end of the book. I want an ending that satisfies the build-up and boy, does she know how to build a story. Anna Dale, a young artist, was chosen to paint a Post Office mural in 1940 for Edenton, NC. Being from New Jersey, was an obstacle right away for her in this insular Southern town. She didn’t…
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by Teri M. Brown Teri M. Brown has written a timely novel that started with a conversation between her and a family friend. That friend was Ukrainian and the rest is history, so to speak. As the story opens, you meet Ivanna and her husband, Lyaksandro. Turmoil is pulling their lives apart. Ukraine was a dangerous place to be in the 1970’s. It was under Soviet rule, but the rumblings of independence were growing. All Ivanna knows is that her husband is dead and now she and their young daughter, Yevtsye, are alone. Ivanna works hard to provide for the two of them. Yevtsye excels in school and is…
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There are some books you are just meant to read at a certain time in your life. The pandemic has left me waiting, I realized today. Waiting to do so many things and this book helped me see that I shouldn’t wait any longer. Not that my head and heart had not been telling me the same thing for quite a while. Sometimes you need beautiful words written by someone else to figure it out. “Faye, Faraway” is more than a time travel book. I was skeptical at first about the whole idea of her falling through a cardboard box and falling back in time to meet herself as a…
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This book opens the story in Bryson City, North Carolina. A town that’s always had it’s challenges. The train comes through on a regular schedule each day and shakes the trailer where we meet Barbara at a turning point in her life. She’s ready to escape her hometown and it’s lack of opportunity for her. One fateful night, in 1960 her life is changed forever. As the story weaves back-and-forth between 1960 and 1976 we meet her daughter, Carole Ann, and her mother, Pearlene. They are three women struggling just to survive. As their choices intersect, all the secrets that Barbara has been swallowing alone, come to the surface. The…
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This intense thriller focuses on motherhood, being a mother, being a good mother. As we get to know several generations of mothers, we see what damage one bad soul can do to their children. We read through examples of good mothers who take care other people’s children and bad mothers who can’t mother at all. And then there is a child, Violet. Blythe Connor gives birth to her first child, a daughter she and Fox, her husband, name Violet. As the exhausting days of motherhood overwhelm Blythe, she begins to think there’s something wrong. Something terribly wrong with her child. She prefers the touch of her father almost from the…
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Ruth, it’s a perfect name from the Bible for this real woman. A name given to her by her grandmother when she was born. A name her Mama (grandmother) hoped would allow her granddaughter to get her foot in a lot of doors. As we get to know our Ruth, we find out that she has a secret. A big secret. This smart, funny woman has a secret that she’s held onto almost her whole life. She hasn’t told her any of her friends, and definitely not her husband. This secret is pressing down on her hard and she’s not sure what to do. You see our Ruth had a…
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“Anxious People” made my heart hurt; it was that good. It started off with this very unusual premise of a bank robbery gone bad at a bank with no money. I’m like, ok… Then the people started talking and the whole book just came together. One thing I love about Fredrik Backman’s writing is the way he weaves his character’s storylines together – all of a sudden you see these connections that you didn’t know even existed. You think they’re a little bit too quirky at the beginning. I’m like, “No one would do that.” Then before you know it, you love them a little, some more than others. I…
