Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book Review: Tangled Times

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Irene Bennett Brown’s Tangled Times, the second novel in the “Nickel Hill Series,” is a fun and emotionally packed story that takes place in 1901 Kansas. I had the pleasure of reading an Advance Reading Copy.

Jocelyn and her husband Pete Pladson manage a cattle operation on the Nickel Hill Ranch. Their hard work is paying off, but rustlers plague their and neighboring ranchers’ herds, causing grave concern and ugly accusations. Each head of cattle is precious in building the herd, and the cattle thieves usually take the easy prey, calves, which are the future of the ranch.

Jocelyn longs to have children, yearns to hold her own baby. Two children appear separately in the Pladson’s lives, both looking for a stable home. Rommy’s father is unable to care for him; Nila’s mother has kicked the teenager out of the house. This isn’t how Jocelyn planned motherhood, but these children desperately need a home.

The author does an outstanding job of depicting ranch life, describing the territory, fashions of the day and attitudes of the times. This is a delightful and informative novel, a wonderful addition to the “Nickel Hill Series.”

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Book Review: The Egg and I

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Betty MacDonald’s semi-autobiographical The Egg and I was first published in 1945. It has since been one of America’s favorites. The story takes place in the late 1920s.

The Egg and I goes into a few years of the author’s early life, but soon concentrates on life on a chicken ranch near the town of Chimacum on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Betty and her husband, Bob Heskett, bought a run-down farm and with enormous work, converted it into a chicken ranch. Life wasn’t easy. They had no electricity or running water and had to always be on the look-out for dangerous wildlife.

Good neighbors were essential and the Hesketts had much give and take with theirs. Among their neighbors were Ma and Pa Kettle, whose story later took on a life of its own in a film series.

The book has been criticized as being politically incorrect, but considering when it was written, I accepted the fact that the author simply stated her feelings and observations of the local Native people. Many of America’s early writers expressed opinions that are now considered culturally insensitive.

The Egg and I dispels myths about the glories of living off the land. Farming is hard work, with long hours and no time off for sickness, vacations, etc. Still, despite the labor-intensive ranch work and inconveniences, MacDonald writes with humor and honesty.

The Egg and I richly deserves the favorable attention bestowed on it for generations. I thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining story.

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Book Review: Clock Dance

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Anne Tyler’s delightful novel, Clock Dance, takes us from 1967 to 2017, from Willa Drake’s elementary school days to widowhood, and on to her second marriage to Peter.

Willa receives a startling telephone call from a stranger asking if she can come to Baltimore to help a young woman she’s never met. Her husband Peter balks. Fly all the way from Arizona to Maryland to help a perfect stranger? It’s ridiculous. But, Willa counters, the woman is her son’s ex-girlfriend who is laid up and she needs help caring for her daughter. It’s just until the woman gets back on her feet.

Peter and Willa fly to Baltimore, Peter dragging his feet. Although retired, it seems almost everything Peter does is more important than anything Willa undertakes. And he’s used to getting his own way. They manage to help get the mother and daughter through the early days, but then Peter is ready to leave. To Peter’s disgust, Willa stays. She can’t leave in good conscience. She feels needed and, for the first time in years, finds contentment. The neighborhood is rundown, but the eccentric residents are caring and helpful. Willa becomes involved and finds unexpected fulfillment.

Clock Dance touched my heart. I believe most women will rediscover long-buried truths in Willa’s story about hope and transformation. I highly recommend this heart-felt novel.

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Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

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Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is one of the most captivating novels I’ve read this year.

You know something is amiss with Eleanor right from the start. She applies for a job in Glasgow, Scotland, sporting a black eye, missing teeth, a broken arm, and an old scar on her cheek. Even with these marks of violence, she’s hired for an accounts receivable position, which she does with crisp efficiency. She tends to business and doesn’t involve herself with office gossip. Eleanor keeps to herself. She doesn’t share her life, nor does she show interest in anyone else’s. She follows a strict schedule. On weekends she treats herself to take-out pizza and vodka. Every Wednesday evening she talks to her mother on the telephone, a depressing, insulting conversation that leaves Eleanor depleted. Her only entertainment is working the newspaper’s crossword puzzles.

Eleanor has a problem with her computer at work and asks Raymond, the IT guy, for assistance. Later, he asks her to join him for lunch. It’s nothing Eleanor wants to do, but feels it would be impolite to refuse. On the way, they encounter an old man who has passed out on the street. They stay with him until help arrives. Raymond suggests they visit the old man in the hospital to see how he is doing. Although this is way too much social life for Eleanor, she accepts, seeing the good that it might do the patient. One thing leads to another, and Eleanor accepts another invitation, this time from the man’s family to attend a birthday party. She sees for the first time a closely knit family, a family who laughs and accepts one another with love and patience.

Along the way we learn more about Eleanor. She was shuffled from one foster family to another. She loved school—it was her only joy. Slowly, slowly we learn more about her. Or do we?

When a crises occurs, Eleanor’s life is revealed—not only to the reader, but to herself.

I loved this book. Eleanor’s existence is so painful, I ached for her, but I laughed at her preciseness, too. Honeyman does an excellent job of depicting this type of personality and the internal suffering that belies what we first see in individuals who are “different.” I highly recommend Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

 

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Book Review: The Forgotten Garden

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Kate Morton’s novel, The Forgotten Garden, is a mesmerizing story of mystery and imagination.

In 1913 a little girl arrives in Brisbane, Australia on a ship from England. She’s alone with nothing more than a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a book of fairytales. No one claims the little girl, and the dockmaster and his wife take her in. She eventually becomes the oldest of five girls in a loving, caring family. It has always bothered the dockmaster that Nell doesn’t know that they aren’t her real parents; nor does the girl remember her origins. On her twenty-first birthday she is finally told how she became one of their family. It is shattering news to Nell, who feels betrayed.

Thus begins a life of seeking to find her identity. After her own family is grown, Nell is finally free to trace her true origins. Her quest takes her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast, the home of the Mountrachet family.

Years later, Nell’s beloved granddaughter Cassandra takes up the search to unravel the puzzle of her late grandmother’s past.

The Forgotten Garden’s intricate story leaps from 1913 to 2005, then 1975, back further to 1900, etc. yet all the while moving the story forward. It’s a time-line masterpiece with each cycle solving a bit of the mystery while new puzzles surface.

This is a novel that takes time to read and absorb. Kate Morton is a master story-teller with impressive research skills. It’s a large volume—552 pages in a trade paperback—in which Nell’s mystery unravels to explore why she was left alone on a ship, what role an overgrown garden played, and in the end, what constitutes family.

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Book Review: The Shell Collector

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Anthony Doerr’s elegant prose is captivating in The Shell Collector. His attention to detail and his vast knowledge is impressive. First of the seven stories, also the title of the book, is about a blind shell collector, who lives in East Africa on an Indian Ocean beach.

The second story, “The Hunter’s Wife,” tells about a woman with extraordinary visions and the resulting gap this special talent creates in their relationship. The third story, “So Many Chances,” is about a family who moves from Ohio to Maine and the new world the young daughter discovers.

The fourth story, “For a Long Time This Was Griselda’s Story,” is about normal people in Idaho encountering an extraordinary man with a rare talent. Pure love, resentment and rage simmer in this tale. In the fifth story, “July Fourth,” a group of American anglers and a group of British sport fishermen have a lively feud. It’s Limeys vs Yanks, Old World vs New.

The sixth story, “The Caretaker,” begins in Liberia, Africa and ends on the coast of Oregon. This story is one of my favorites, possibly because it begins in West Africa where we served in the Peace Corps. As in life, the story centers on three truths: order, chance, fate.

The last story, “A Tangle by the Rapid River,” toggles between Africa and Ohio, between a world where things grow wild, where you can hear insects sing, and a place where everything is cement, soot and noise.

The Shell Collector is a collection of stories to cherish and to remember.

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Book Review: A Three Dog Life

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Australian Aborigines slept with their dogs for warmth on cold nights, the coldest being a “three dog night.” …Wikipedia

Abigail Thomas’s memoir, A Three Dog Life, is a story of courage in the face of disaster. Plain-spoken and full of wisdom, the book takes us through terror and eventual acceptance of what never can be changed.

While walking their dog in New York city, Abigail’s husband, Rich, was hit by a car and suffered a shattered skull leaving him with serious and permanent brain damage. He was eventually admitted to an upstate New York care facility that specializes in treating traumatic brain injuries. So that she could be closer to her husband, Abigail moved from their apartment to a house a short distance away from Rich’s new permanent home.

They were married for twelve years before the accident, each with grown children from  previous marriages. Now 63, Abigail’s life was irreversibly changed. She observed Rich grind through the various stages of brain damage: psychosis, paranoia, hallucinations, aggressive behavior, and rages. He had no memory of what happened to him, nor of the year before. He lost short-term memory so that moments after Abigail left, he had no recollection of their visit. But he did have periods of uncanny perceptions and would say things about what she had been thinking. Abigail found ways to cope and to learn how to live alone.  One of the things she did was to acquire two more dogs, making a total of three, and the four of them became a team. She found ways to find pleasure in small things and to find new interests.

I loved this touching and profound memoir. Dealing with this kind of tragedy takes patience and grace. I found author Abigail Thomas’s quiet, droll sense of humor refreshing. She managed to make a new life—not one she preferred, but one that was nevertheless satisfying.

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Book Review: The Boston Girl

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Anita Diamant’s novel, The Boston Girl: A Novel, captures the essence of an immigrant Jewish family. College student Ava interviews her 85 year-old grandmother Addie: “How did you become the woman you are today?”

Addie was born into an immigrant Jewish family in Boston in the early 1900’s. During her lifetime, her family experiences many changes in society, changes her parents resist. Addie’s mother, a bitter, complaining woman, sees little good in anything. Her father is mostly silent during his wife’s rages, but Addie feels the brunt of the family’s strife. They live in a cold water flat with a shared outhouse in back of the tenement.

As Addie grows into womanhood, she realizes her life is different from that of her family’s old-world views, and she strives to create an independent life. Addie’s story takes us through WWI, the depression, and ends in the 1930’s.

I found The Boston Girl enlightening with its world views seen through Jewish immigrants’ eyes. As Addie is exposed to other ways of life, she longs to become a part of the new world, but always feels the burden of her parents’ anger and frustration. Anita Diamant is also the author of The Red Tent, which is an entirely different novel than The Boston Girl, so much so that I found it difficult to believe it was the same author. But The Boston Girl has its own value in its sharing of the difficulties of adapting to an unfamiliar culture.

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Book Review: A Land To Call Home

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A Land to Call Home, the third novel in “The Red River of the North Series” is another exceptional Historical Fiction by Lauraine Snelling. The story takes place in 1884-85 in Dakota Territory, in what would become North Dakota.

The story centers around the families of two sisters-in-law, both widowed and remarried, but includes other neighbors and relatives who fight to survive the struggle of taming the virgin prairie. The adults are originally from Norway and they speak Norwegian, though struggle to learn English. As the pioneers face almost insurmountable challenges to “prove up” their individual homesteads, they also work toward their dream of building a real town.

The immigrants’ homes are made of sod, dwellings that are dark and damp. But the women make colorful quilts to liven their environment. Even the combination church/school building is a sod structure. Helping one another, sharing their meager supplies, and living their strong Christian faith carry them through the hard times.

Reading this series has made me appreciate even more the hardships of our early pioneers. I love reading about how those brave people managed, what they ate and how they spent their time. Their lives were centered around their deeply rooted religion. When their faith was tested, they helped one another through it. I particularly enjoyed the first Christmas program in the new soddy school house. In those days there were no problems celebrating a traditional Christmas pageant with a live baby, donkey, even sheep. The community pitched in with materials to make the program a success.

Lauraine Snelling captures the spirit of our hard-working early settlers. As I’ve followed along with many of the same characters in previous books in the series, I applaud their triumphs and despair their hardships. I admire their deep faith and their ingenuity in finding ways to strive. I love the “Red River of the North” series and look forward to book four.

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Book Review: A Dog Called Hope

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A Dog Called Hope: A Wounded Warrior and the Service Dog Who Saved Him by Jason Morgan and Damien Lewis is a well written, moving true story.

While on an anti-narcotics raid, special forces warrior Jason Morgan parachuted into a Central American jungle. He’d served with the famous Night Stalkers on many such missions, but this assignment ended badly for Morgan. Months later he regained consciousness in a U.S. military hospital, paralyzed from the waist down, in chronic pain, and with no memory of what had happened to him.

In the meantime, Jim Siegfried, a Canine Companion for Independence (CCI) puppy trainer, was assigned a dog to raise and train. In the eighteen months Jim would have Napal, a black Labrador Retriever, the pup learned to respond to thirty commands and be prepared for the next training sessions to meet special-needs recipients. It’s a tremendous sacrifice for puppy trainers. The bond between trainer and pup becomes very strong and giving up the dog is heart-wrenching. Some dogs don’t make the grade, but those who do become a life-line to veterans and the disabled.

Jason Morgan’s life spiraled downward to the point of his having no hope. This once-active career military and family man’s life as he knew it ended with his massive injuries. Jason’s life took a remarkable turn when he learned about CCI. He was given Napal and after the two trained together at a California CCI facility, Jason was able to respond to his family’s needs and know real happiness. Not everything ran smoothly in Jason’s life, but with Napal he was again able to find humor, companionship and meaning in life.

A Dog Called Hope is a remarkable story about the strong bond between man and dog. I learned how intensely trained CCI service dogs are and how they can change lives. Although the dogs cost about $50,000 to raise and train, they are free to the recipients. The book opened my eyes to the challenges a wheel-chair bound person faces. But a canine companion does more than pick up dropped objects and open doors. Their constant presence helps build confidence, open up new possibilities, all the while providing unconditional love and joy. I highly recommend this touching and often humorous book.

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