Life after Life by Kate Atkinson

No review could do justice to Kate Atkinson's magnum opus. Life after Life defies description as it's grander and more imaginatively brilliant than simple words can depict. Atkinson takes the many lives of Ursula Todd and strings them together like graduated pearls on a necklace in her novel of destiny and “what might have been.” Ursula Todd was born on a snowy 1910 evening in the English countryside and she died before her first breath because the doctor couldn't get there in time to save her BUT on the very next page on that same night the doctor did arrive and Ursula lived. She lived only to die again, over and over again, in countless ways. Yet she lived again to save the world, to suffer immeasurable losses, to make good and bad choices, to fall by chance into a Pandora's Box packed with opportunities and crises, and throughout it all to mesmerize this reader.

Ursula should be an impossible character to reveal as she constantly changes and doesn't always suffer, grow or learn from the consequences of what she does or what's done to her.

What if she really had killed Hitler in 1930 near the novel's beginning? What if she'd taken an earlier path home one day? These and other questions make the reader's mind spin at the beginning only to settle into the unexpected rhythm of the book's constant changes in time and place. Yes, it takes a few chapters to enter that rhythm but once there it's magical.

Ursula's childhood home with a mother who epitomizes the old-fashioned sort who lives for her children and a father who loves all of them and calls her “little bear” should be idyllic yet bad things keep happening there. Their home is called Fox Corners and a magnificent section titled “Like a Fox in a Hole” shows a full cast of prey and predators. Rabbits and foxes abound with rabbits even finding their way onto the book's sumptuous blue endpapers. Atkinson's publisher sought out a William Morris wallpaper for them and it turned out to be Atkinson's own dining room wallpaper. Perhaps seeing it daily influenced her use of the creatures.

In adulthood, Ursula works with a crew that goes in after bombings in London's blitz and Atkinson is at her best in setting these scenes. In one incident Ursula and her companion were “both terribly down in spirits” as one of their compatriots, a bank manager had been killed by a delayed-action bomb and they attempted to move him: Ursula took his shoulders and her co-worker his ankles and “Mr. Palmer's body came apart like a Christmas cracker.”

Ursula's ruminations on war infuse the book with historical and cultural references that set the primary theme of living as if there's no tomorrow as in this conversation with her brother Teddy:

“And the poor Germans, I doubt many of them are in favor of war. . . But if we had lost the Great War and been burdened with great debt just as the world's economy collapsed then perhaps we too would have been a tinderbox awaiting the strike of a flint --”

“No point in thinking,” she said briskly, “you just have to get on with life. . . We only have one after all, we should try and do our best. We can never get it right, but we must try.”

“What if we had a chance to do it again and again,” Teddy said, “until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?”

“I think it would be exhausting. I would quote Nietzsche at you but you would probably thump me.”

“Probably,” he said amiably. “He's a Nazi, isn't he?”

If Atkinson were a less gifted writer, we would want to “thump” her for her literary conceits but they work so well that the reader relishes them as an alternate reality.

Summing it Up: Read Atkinson's magnum opus for the splendid writing and to enter a brilliant world that will take you through the first half of the twentieth century and make you contemplate life if there were second chances. Think of this book as a necklace – entirely circular with each bead telling a different story.

Rating: 5 stars

Category: Fiction, Five Stars, Gourmet, Book Club

Publication date: April 2, 2013

Author’s Website: http://www.kateatkinson.co.uk/

Read an Excerpt: http://software.newsstand.com/bookrdr/hbg-live/BookBrowse.html?a=3bxrJ%2FD%2B9mavsr%2FH86rgz%2BzNX3tPUI9WBFi7U%2Fs8D7i00G1eXRg0aIZjG69xipuDnjIa%2FM6yHR0tIvCgPkrdSc7wwOe4LsmB2asdMzJtAYs7TVOtxvsdUMQX0YrFB0VZ&z=hbg

Reading Group Guide: http://www.litlovers.com/reading-guides/13-fiction/9178-life-after-life-atkinson?start=3

What Others are Saying:

Los Angeles Times: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/05/entertainment/la-ca-jc-kate-atkinson-20130407

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/books/review/life-after-life-by-kate-atkinson.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

National Public Radio: http://www.npr.org/2013/04/02/175696606/in-life-after-life-caught-in-the-dangerous-machinery-of-history

Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-316-17648-4

The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10005802/Life-After-Life-by-Kate-Atkinson-review.html

The Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers

I almost set this book aside as its title and beginning chapters made me fear it would be twee and simplistic but thankfully I stayed with it and would encourage readers to do the same with this thoughtful moral fable.  The book begins with Agnès Morel, a tall, dark, slender woman known to many inhabitants of the cathedral town of Chartres as someone who “had made herself useful in the small ways that help to oil the wheels of daily life.  She was an accomplished ironer, a reliable babysitter and was known to “sit” naked for Robert Clément (the last activity making her less desirable to some in the first capacities).  She made a reputation as a conscientious cleaner.”   Agnès had arrived in Chartres twenty years previously and the cathedral’s current dean, the Abbé Paul, had found her sleeping in a porch niche. Since then she’s cleaned the church giving special attention to the famed labyrinth’s darkened paving stones that drew her there.  One of Agnès’ virtues was that she didn’t say much.  The tranquility she exhibits endears her to most of the town.

Agnès was a foundling, raised by nuns. She was bright and excelled at numbers but seemed to the nuns incapable of learning to read or write.  When she was fourteen and inexplicably pregnant, the sisters sent her off to a discreet nursing home where she bore a son who was removed from her immediately after his birth.  Agnès returned to the convent in a troubled state and spent time in psychiatric care before her move to Chartres.  As the novel wends its way back and forth between Agnès present life in Chartres and her previous sojourns, she transforms the lives of each of the people who work beside her.  Yet, as Agnès enters each life, elements of sin and moral dilemmas reveal themselves.

Agnès is ridden with anxiety especially when nasty gossip threatens to derail her quiet life. Her constant labors allow her to avoid confronting her past and she notes that “boredom is a luxury of a life lived without fear.”   Agnès’ gift is her simple, philosophical manner coupled with her droll wit which subtly captures the reader as it does the people she meets.  The second half of the book contains several mysterious circumstances that threaten Agnès and others. In this way the book is reminiscent of the book and movie Chocolat, in both setting and in the way in which Agnès seemingly arrives with the wind and alters life in the cathedral town while revealing unseemly secrets.  The novel also has the sensibility and wisdom of The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  Devotees of Louise Penny’s psychological mysteries will also enjoy Vickers’s use of darkness and light to explore second chances and evil.

Francophiles and those who embrace the lessons of the labyrinth will race to read this novel but all who want a contemporary morality play and psychological drama with a discreet “aha” will cherish this savory morsel.  Vickers’s former life as a psychoanalyst surfaces in her portraits of troubled characters.

Summing it Up:  Read this subtle, yet jubilant, rumination on life, love, faith, sin, and hope held together with a bow that is Agnès, a character you won’t soon forget. Reading The Cleaner of Chartres is a bit like eating a chocolate croissant with a rich cup of coffee in a patisserie in a small French village while looking out the window on the townspeople going about their day. All you observe may not be as it seems so linger awhile and settle into its rhythm as you learn what’s behind the facade. 

Rating:  5 stars

Category: Fiction, Dessert, Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Book Club

Publication date: June 27, 2013

Author’s Website: http://www.salleyvickers.com/

Reading Group Guide: http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/the_cleaner_of_chartres.html

What Others are Saying: 

The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/11/cleaner-of-chartres-salley-vickers-review

The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/paperback-review-the-cleaner-of-chartres-by-salley-vickers-8612256.html

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/salley-vickers/cleaner-of-chartres/

Publishers Weekly: http://publishersweekly.com/978-0-670-78567-4

Mission by Peter Robertson

Good mysteries grab you from the get-go and Mission’s simple four-page opening chapter doesn’t disappoint: “In the morning, on the occasion of my forty-eighth birthday, I rode my bicycle, received a text from my best friend, drank a free cup of coffee, and helped pull a dead body from a flooded creek.” 

After wrestling the body from between two rocks onto the grass an EMT and a Boulder, Colorado cop gently lifted the body and the impossibly thin young man’s loose trousers slid down revealing him. The cop yanked his trousers up and after the body was removed, one of two college-aged cyclists who had stopped to help “chose to speak, and the wordless eloquence of the moment was indelibly transformed. ‘Dude.  Did you see the size of his dick?’  I did.  And they did.  We all did.”

Thus begins Peter Robertson’s second mystery featuring Tom, a Scottish expat first introduced in Permafrost, a mystery set in Chicago and northern Michigan ten years previously.  After learning that this was the second body of a homeless man to be hauled from the surging waters of Boulder creek in the last month, Tom has an inkling that there might be more involved than two unrelated accidents.  Tom, a mostly retired businessman who moved from Chicago to Boulder after his marriage ended, leads a routine life funded by a business ably run by his friend Nye so he has the time to follow his hunch. 

Tom’s investigations lead him to the Boulder Library where many homeless men and women spend their days, to Faith Community Church on a Sunday night when the homeless guests line up for Dora’s famous meatloaf and a spot on one of the thin mattresses laid out side by side on the church floor, as well as to the bridge over the creek where over forty-four people stood carrying their possessions awaiting a bus to a bed for the night.

Armed with little more than his research into the patterns of Boulder’s homeless and the physiological aberration of the victim he helped pull out of the creek, Tom doggedly searches for a reason for the drownings. Those who read Permafrost will appreciate Tom’s evolution into a more multi-faceted character. Mission shows Robertson’s growth particularly in his crisp sentences, in the ways he helps the reader get to know characters through their actions instead of through long descriptions. In both books, Robertson uses Tom’s choice of music to follow what’s going on inside his head.  Robertson provides a playlist of the music which gave this reader more insight into Tom than chapters of words could have done. Robertson spent ten years reviewing mysteries for Publishers Weekly and his knowledge of what works in the genre shows.

A business trip takes Tom to Scotland where he learns more of his past and begins the soul searching that makes him care even more about the homeless who seem to have too few to care about them. Robertson absolutely nails Faith Community’s Sunday night site with its meals, mattresses, and routines. Robertson and his family belong to the same church I attend in Chicago’s southern suburbs and his descriptions perfectly evoke winter Sunday evenings there where volunteers and homeless guests spend the night together.

Summing it Up: Read this for a traditional mystery with a unique setting and a compelling protagonist.  Read it for its humanity and for an up close and personal look at the volunteers and guests in church homeless shelters. I can’t wait for the next installment as the last pages of Mission have me anxious to learn more about Tom and perhaps about a certain homeless man. This is no Chinese Carryout, read it and forget it, mystery.  Tom’s interactions will stick with you just as Dora’s lovingly prepared meatloaf does for those lucky enough to arrive in time to get it.

Rating: 5 stars   

Category: Fiction, Five Stars,  Mysteries and Thrillers, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Super Nutrition

Publication date: May 26, 2013

Q & A with the Author: http://www.gibsonhousepublishers.com/books/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/QAMissionRobertson.pdf

Music Selections in Mission: http://www.gibsonhousepublishers.com/?p=243

What Others are Saying:

Booklist: http://booklistonline.com/Mission-Peter-Robertson/pid=6050029

On Permafrost: The welcome beginning of a superbly smart and addictive series." - Doug Stanton, best-selling author of In Harm's Way and Horse Soldiers

Bootstrapper by Mardi Jo Link

Mardi Jo Link’s fierce love for her three sons oozes from every page of this ode to tenacity, honesty, authenticity, and creative survival skills. Bootstrapper: from Broke to Bad Ass on a Northern Michigan Farm begins in June, 2005, when Link’s boys were aged fifteen, eleven and eight and she divorces their father because “he sleeps and smokes his way through life. Because he refuses to take any real action against his longtime perpetual melancholy.”  Her husband didn’t understand her either – “Do you think it’s been easy for me” he’d shouted . . . “Waking up every goddamn morning next to Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm?”  Yes, this “Rebecca” is inherently optimistic even when the odds are piled haphazardly like a drunken Jenga tower ready to tumble down upon her and the small farm where she and her boys live.  Despite the improbability of their being able to keep it all together, Link grabs a firm hold on her new life: “I’m claiming my sons, the farm, the debt, the other debts, the horses, the dogs, and the land.  I’m claiming our century-old farmhouse, the garden, the woods, the pasture, the barn, and the Quonset-hut garage.   They’re all mine now, and this is how I will raise my boys: on cheerful summer days and well water and BB guns and horseback riding and dirt. Because I’m claiming our whole country life, the one I’ve been dreaming of and planning out and working for since I was a little girl.  

Last night the full moon hung low and close, like a glistening teardrop on the earth’s dark eye, threatening to spill.  It didn’t, though, and neither did I. A month is a bill cycle, a mortgage cycle, and may become a child-support cycle, but a month is also a moon phase and a growing phase.  Our financial lives, our emotional lives, and our cosmic lives are irrevocably intertwined.

If I can follow the moon, if I can remember that both waxing and waning are only temporary, a natural cycle continually renewed and nothing to get too attached to, we’ll make it.  I just have to stay solvent for thirty days at a time.  And then another thirty.  And another.”

Link’s financial planning won’t ever be featured on Forbes or Bloomberg and it’s soon evident that in claiming her boys, her farm and her debts that she and her boys must find creative ways to eat that don’t involve any layout of cash.  They tend their vegetable garden, can and freeze food for the winter, raise a pig and several chickens, and win a year’s supply of bread by growing prize-worthy giant zucchini. Christmas day finds the four building a bonfire for an outdoor Christmas dinner of hot dogs and S’mores with a round of “Silent Night” sung on their very own land.  Adversity strikes when their freezer dies as Link is in bed with the flu and they lose the rest of the winter’s food.  The heating bills are so high she and the boys forage for wood and stoke their old fireplace to keep warm. Link makes some imprudent decisions and there are times when she isn’t very likable but she’s always doggedly determined and funny –yes, unceasingly funny. Life on the edge is just that, one step from disaster but Link will not let them give up. 

In one of my favorite scenes, they awake to a February snow so deep it takes the four of them over five hours shoveling a scoop at a time to clear their driveway.  “And for the first time in a long time, I’m proud of us.  Proud enough even to balance my camera on the flat hood of the farm truck, set the automatic timer, and take a picture.  Looking at the image, at my sons’ faces, I’m pretty sure that they’re proud of themselves, too. My memory of this day is dominated by smiles. . . Then Link recalls a platitude in her divorce manual: “Parents are role models for their children and need to set a good example for them. Children imitate the behaviors and attitudes of their parents.”  She says to herself: If I can model hard work, that will at least be something.”

Link uses the moon’s cycles to begin each chapter of her memoir with the next phase of the moon and an epigraph to signal the arc of their lives. She takes the reader down the rabbit hole that is her tenuous hold on her land, her family, and her dreams. Her story builds as she goes from bitterness and disappointment to faith that her prayers will be answered.  As the devil’s moon rises in June, 2006, Link realizes that she’s spent a year asking for things – “Please help me survive this flu. Please let us keep the Big Valley. Please.”  All her prayers are answered although not all with the answers she sought and she begins ruminating on faith:

“Faith, whether it’s in Jesus, or a church, or the power of the human mind to connect, isn’t ever going to be a meaningful force in my life if it’s always one-sided.  Faith, connection, spirituality – none of it means very much if it’s always with the please, please, please, but never a single thank-you. 

Readers, if you take one thing from this book, it will be Link’s fierce work ethic, her absolute resolve that if she just works hard and teaches her sons to work hard, that they will succeed and they will succeed with gratitude in their hearts.  How could anyone not love a mother who models that kind of intense resolve.

Summing it Up: Mardi Jo Link begins her book as a funny, somewhat bitter, acerbic woman hell-bent on keeping her boys and their rural life style.  Read the book to see how her humor and unyielding grit help her find love and hope on a northern Michigan farm.  Shed a tear or two and laugh out loud as you share the ride that is motherhood with this authentic woman who uses much more than just her boots to pull herself out of misery and insolvency into a life well lived.

Caveat: I consider Mardi Link a friend; we met several years ago at a writing workshop and I was immediately impressed by her honesty, her talent, her kindness, and her humor.  For me, it’s pure joy to see all those qualities soar in this memoir.  I have tried to be objective in my assessment of her writing as I see all the qualities I first observed in Mardi Jo Link the person revealed on every page of this stunner.

Rating:  5 stars

Category: Non fiction, Dessert, Five Stars, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Book Club

Publication date: June 11, 2013

Author’s Website: http://mardijolink.com/

Publisher’s Website and Excerpt:  

Reading Group Guide: http://www.randomhouse.com/book/210042/bootstrapper-by-mardi-jo-link#discussionquestions

Interview: http://nationalwritersseries.org/author-next-door-spotlight-mardi-jo-link/

Book Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpH_z5YGIKA

What Others are Saying: 

“A heroic-comic saga of single motherhood, pure stubbornness, and the loyalty of three young sons. And more than that, an honest account of the working poor, the people who buy day-old bread, patronize libraries, rarely go to movies, and don't need your sympathy. Just a break now and then.”
     —Garrison Keillor
 

Booklist: http://www.booklistonline.com/Bootstrapper-From-Broke-to-Badass-on-a-Northern-Michigan-Farm-Mardi-Jo-Link/pid=6087559

BookPage: http://bookpage.com/review/bootstrapper/pick-yourself-up-and-dust-yourself-off

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/mardi-jo-link/bootstrapper/

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/books/review/homeward-bound-and-bootstrapper.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Portable TV: http://portable.tv/culture/post/coming-back-to-the-dream-mardi-jo-links-bootstrapper/#1

Traverse City Record Eagle: http://record-eagle.com/features/x1307048721/Author-mines-family-history-for-new-book

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

Beginning with Saboor, a poor Afghani in a small village in 1952, telling a beautiful fable to his children Abdullah, age ten and Pari, age three, Hosseini alerts the reader that the lives of this family will follow Saboor’s tale and wake them in the night for the rest of their lives.  Abdullah adores his little sister and seems more her father and soul mate than brother.  Their mother died giving birth to Pari and she means everything to Abdullah. Saboor’s second wife Parwana has born two sons and they’ve lost one in infancy to winter’s privations and she works endlessly to keep her baby alive.  Parwana’s brother Nabi has left their small village and is a cook and chauffeur for Suleiman, a wealthy Kabul man, who marries Nila, a poet, who doesn’t fit Kabul society’s rules. She sinks into depression because she cannot have children.

Nabi, who has a crush on Nila, wants to alleviate her sadness. So he arranges for Nila and Suleiman Wahdati to adopt Pari to save her from possible death in the cold winter thus mirroring the fable their father told the children.  Abdullah is crushed beyond imagining when Pari is left with the Wahdatis. Pari is young enough to adapt to her new family without any obvious problems. She brings life to the Wahdati marriage.  They dote on her, read to her, take her to the park and become a family thus forming a marriage that never seemed to have any depth of feeling before her arrival. Nabi is a cinematic observer of the marriage:

“I remember that when my parents fought, they did not stop until a clear victor had been declared. It was their way of sealing off unpleasantness, to caulk it with a verdict, keep it from leaking into the normalcy of the next day.  Not so with the Wahdatis. Their fights didn’t so much end as dissipate – like a drop of ink in a bowl of water, with a residual tint that lingered.”

Later Suleiman has a stroke and Nila can’t cope with his illness so she and Pari move to Paris and leave all connections to Afghanistan behind.   Nila’s poetry brings her critical acclaim but depression and alcoholism reduce her. Pari spends her childhood thinking her father has died and not knowing that she has other family.  Pari loves mathematics and problems with solutions.  She senses that something is missing from her life but doesn’t have any idea of what it might be.  The novel explores the lives of those left behind in Afghanistan through a series of minor characters and flashbacks.

And the Mountains Echoed shows the effects of extreme poverty and what it can force a family to do. It’s filled with Hosseini’s imaginative language and characters but the unessential stories of an Afghan warlord, two cousins from America looking for their inheritance and a Greek’s long, long journey to becoming a doctor in Kabul spoil the flow of the central story of siblings Pari and Abdullah and how their separation changed their lives.  Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times adored this novel and she’s rarely effusive.  Kirkus Reviews panned it.  Most Hosseini fans will love it.

Summing it Up: Read this for the beautiful fable that begins the novel and for the way the stories of Pari and Abdullah mirror the fable. Enjoy Hosseini’s imaginative characters and his exploration of the Afghani diaspora as you put up with some minor characters’ contrived lives when they interrupt a simple story of sibling love and separation.

Rating: 3.5 stars   

Category: Fiction, Grandma’s Pot Roast, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: May 21, 2013

Author’s Website: http://khaledhosseini.com/

Reading Group Guide:  http://media.bloomsbury.com/rep/files/and-the-mountains-echoed-reading-group-guide-pdf-version.pdf  and http://khaledhosseini.com/books/and-the-mountains-echoed/discussion-questions/

Excerpt:  http://khaledhosseini.com/books/and-the-mountains-echoed/discussion-questions/

What Others are Saying: 

Learn more about the history of women poets in Afghanistan in the Atlantic:  http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/the-tumultuous-history-behind-i-and-the-mountains-echoed-i-s-female-poet/276335/

Kirkus Reviews: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/khaled-hosseini/and-the-mountains-echoed/

New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/books/and-the-mountains-echoed-by-khaled-hosseini.html

Tasty Treats for Mother’s Day

What to buy Mom for Mother’s Day will depend on her taste?  Does she like gourmet reads that require attention and reflection?   Is her life hectic so she’s looking for something that will grab her attention immediately but not necessarily stick with her?  Does she love a good story with a dollop of history on top?   Would she prefer a new and different treat?  Here are some last-minute suggestions.  If you’re lucky enough to live near an independent book store, drop in and describe your mother, tell the bookseller some of the books your Mom has loved and you’ll be rewarded with great suggestions and they’ll probably wrap your choice for free.  

For the Mom who likes a gourmet read with a strong storyline:

Temple Grove by Scott Elliott is a story of a mother’s love and a son’s quest set in Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. Temple Grove is one of the last undisturbed stands of ancient Douglas firs.  It’s been protected by its location on National Park land but that’s now in dispute and loggers want it.  Enter Paul, an 18-year-old Makah (native peninsula tribe) who wants to save the trees.  Paul’s mother, Trace, faced long odds in raising him and she just wants to keep him safe.  Tribal culture, environmental concerns, and the need for work in a land where beauty won’t put food on the table lead to adventurous encounters, dangerous forest pursuits, and questions that mothers will take to their book clubs to discuss.

For the Mom who’d like a big story with a message and a little history:

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler tells of Isabelle, a white woman in her 80’s, who asks Dorrie, her African-American hair stylist and friend, if she’ll drive her from East Texas to Cincinnati.   As the women wend their way north, Isabelle slowly reveals the unresolved pain of her teenage affair with her family maid’s brother, Robert, a black man.  Isabelle wants to return for a funeral which may uncover secrets she’s kept hidden for over sixty years.  As Isabelle divulges her story, Dorrie begins to realize that she needs to confront her own romantic and parental difficulties. This debut novel based partially on the author’s own family history is sure to please mothers with its freshly told tale.

For the Mom who wants a love story and a tear jerker:

Me Before You by JoJo Moyes is a love story not a cheap romance. Lou Clark is an acerbic, 26-year-old girl who needs a good job to support her disintegrating family.  Her boyfriend of seven years, a triathlon- obsessed pretty boy, provides no emotional support but he’s steady.  Lou accepts a position in the home of the wealthiest family in town where she’s to care for Will, a quadriplegic, former wheeler-dealer, who’s giving up on life.  Will’s mother begs Lou to stick with the job despite Will’s treatment of her.  You think you know where this is going but twists make it more than a romantic romp.  It’s a carpe diem treat.

For the mother who’d like a humorous yet poignant escape:

The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore is a bit of an African-American Steel Magnolias set in southern Indiana in the days when separate but equal was a strictly enforced rule.  It’s a tale of friendships nurtured around a big table in Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat Café.  Odette, Clarice, Barbara Jean, and their husbands gather at Earl’s every Sunday after church to swap stories and support each other. The rhythmic lilt of their conversations feeds humorous stories and underlying miseries.

For the Mom who wants a suspenseful trial novel with lots of twists and the revelation of what being a mother really means:

The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne is for any mother who likes a suspense-filled novel with intriguing characters and a trial that will make her wonder about nature versus nurture.  If your mother likes psychological thrillers and if she enjoyed the intricate plotting and devious turns in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, she’ll delight in this tale.  Daniel, a formerly troubled foster child, is now a lawyer defending an eleven-year-old boy accused of murdering his playmate. Daniel’s childhood with Minnie, a foster parent who rears him on her farm is revealed in alternating flashback chapters.  Minnie’s mothering saves Daniel until one day things fall apart. Sebastian, the defendant, is just a little boy yet he seems devious and lacking in empathy.  His mother seems too broken to care for him adequately so he turns to Daniel for emotional support. 

For the mother who loves historical fiction and reading about the role of women in history:

Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini documents the little known history of Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln’s dressmaker and confidante. Those who love being an eye-witness to the Civil War and Mrs.Lincoln’s life after Lincoln’s death will also enjoy the aspects of fashion and dressmaking that allowed Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave, to support herself and send her son to college as well as to begin a society to support the newly freed. Chiaverini uses Keckley’s own diaries to inform the novel. This easy read will be sure to please many mothers. It also begs the question of why this woman is so little known.

For the Mom who wants to disappear into a fantastic novel that will have her contemplating her own life:

Benediction by Kent Haruf is quite simply magnificent.  Read the full review on this site: 

http://hungryforgoodbooks.blogspot.com/2013/03/benediction-by-kent-haruf.html.

If you’re still unsure, get your Mom a gift card from her favorite bookstore earmarked for her to buy Khalid Hosseini’s new novel And the Mountains Echoed when it comes out on May 21, 2013.  Your mother probably adored The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Sons and she’d surely love this (hint, hint). 

River of Dust by Virginia Pye

Virginia Pye’s novel, River of Dust, opens in 1910, less than a decade after the Boxer Rebellion when Christian missionaries were massacred and foreigners were either killed or driven out of the country. Reverend John Wesley Watson and his wife Grace have lived on northwestern China’s windswept plains for four years.  Their toddler son Wesley was born in their missionary village and Grace is pregnant again after miscarrying.  They’ve just arrived with servants Mai Lin and Acho at a remote “vacation home” outside the missionary compound when two Mongolian nomads charge across their land. One of the men yells “Death to Lord Jesus!”  Grace begs the men to leave them alone and offers them the family’s cow telling them “Let us be.  Certainly, we have done nothing to harm you.”  Her words infuriate the men and the younger man snatches Rev. Watson’s handkerchief from his pocket and stuffs it into one of his many pouches where Grace notices another “strip of cloth that appeared to be of the same fine linen as her husband’s handkerchief.”  Her husband tells her to take her son inside and lock the doors but as she flees the man sweeps down and grabs her son’s arm. She holds on until “the barbarian stopped toying with Grace and simply yanked her son away.  She would never forget how easily Wesley was lost to her, as if to show that . . . They could take whatever they pleased.  And what they wanted was not her but the child.” 

Rev. Watson and Acho immediately set off to recapture Wesley. “The Reverend bore nothing except his fury, height, and stature as a Man of God in a land of infidels.  That would have to be enough.”  Their search leads them to a remote opium den where Rev. Watson is shot but saved by the book of poems in his breast pocket. To the Chinese who call him Ghost Man, this validates the legends surrounding him even after another shot injures him.

In the following weeks as Rev. Watson recuperates, search parties comb the Shansi Desert looking for Wesley and the Watsons continue to believe that Wesley will be found.   Once Rev. Watson regains his health, he and Acho spend months searching for Wesley, returning to the compound only occasionally. Rev. Watson seems to others in the compound to be disturbed and the amulets, talismans, and massive fur he wears make the other missionary families uneasy.

Grace, however, never gives up hope. “There was no denying she was a cheerful Midwestern girl at heart: an American girl, synonymous with optimism.  And in so being, she understood that she must endure her greatest punishment.  She must live with the hope, the infernal hope that love could survive even out here where nothing else did. Her son would return to her.  She just knew it.”

Grace tells her husband, “It isn’t your fault. . . Please don’t blame yourself.”

“But it is, and I do,” says Rev. Watson.

This novel of retribution contains clues like Rev. Watson’s handkerchief that warn the reader that there’s a backstory behind the nomads’ actions. That backstory and the way in which the land serves as a character form something of an Old Testament-like rendering. During the Reverend’s absence, the area has fallen into a deep drought and dust covers every surface. Children are dying, no one has any hope, and Grace increasingly turns to Mai Lin’s potions to maintain “the correct balance” in her life. She sees visions and tries to find blessings in her surroundings but her faith begins to waver.

I don’t know if River of Dust was intended as a tribute to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in its exploration of savagery versus civilization and in the Reverend’s god-like appearance to the Chinese but comparing the two is inevitable.  Rev. Watson’s wearing of “non-Christian” garb and his odd associations coupled with Grace’s reliance on her amah, Mai Lin, show the not-so-subtle changes in the couple’s beliefs. The novel’s vivid imagery of the physical changes in both Rev. Watson and his wife makes the reader feel each character’s journey better than any simple telling of it might do.

Pyes’ novel is informed by the life of her grandfather, the Reverend Watts O. Pye, one of the first missionaries to return to Shanxi Province less than a decade after the 1900 Boxer Rebellion.  Her grandmother, Gertrude Chaney, had three children in Shanxi.  Her two daughters died young and her son Lucien Pye was the only one to live to adulthood.  Watts Pye died when Lucien was five and he and Gertrude Chaney remained in China even under the Japanese occupation. Lucien Pye went to college in the U.S., served as a translator for the U.S. Marines during World War II then studied at Yale under the G.I. Bill. He wrote over twenty books on China and Asia.  Watts Pye’s diaries along with stories Virginia Pye heard while having tea parties with her grandmother using her fine Chinese porcelain infuse this novel with a unique voice, perspective, and authenticity.

Summing it Up: Read River of Dust for a view of 1910 China that will inform, entertain, and enlighten you.  Savor it for Pye’s ability to show the changes in her characters through their actions and for the way she makes Acho and Mai Lin delightfully real and complex.  Choose it for your book club to discuss the influence of the culture of the time and the nature of circumstances that can alter beliefs and faith.  Note: Ms. Pye is happy to meet with book groups (http://virginiapye.com/bookclubs.html).

Rating: 4 stars   

Category: Historical Fiction, Gourmet, Super Nutrition, Book Club

Publication date: May 14, 2013

Author’s Website: http://virginiapye.com/index.html

Book Trailer: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9meL215HlDJb1lrcWZDTThadlU/edit

Reading Group Guide:  http://unbridledbooks.com/images/uploads/pdfs/RiverDust_RG.pdf

Publisher’s Website and Excerpt:  http://unbridledbooks.com/our_books/book/river_of_dust

What Others are Saying: 

"Terrific, tremendous, wonderful...a strong, beautiful, deep book." –Annie Dillard
on River of Dust by Virginia Pye

“A vividly imagined and beautifully drawn picture of the life of Christian missionaries in China in the early 20th century.”—- Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China; co-author, Mao: the Unknown Story

“Virginia Pye’s River of Dust is a remarkable novel in the ways that delight me the most: It has a compelling narrative voice, a dynamic story and a deep resonance into the universal human condition, all of which is inextricably bound together. This is a major work by a splendid writer.” –Robert Olen Butler'

China Daily: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/culture/2014-03/18/content_17354551.htm

Style Weekly: http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/book-preview-river-of-dust/Content?oid=1883320

Washington Post:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-review-river-of-dust-by-virginia-pye/2013/05/31/1ece6bce-c318-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html