If you’ve ever read the classics (either for school or pleasure) you’ve heard of George Eliot. If you’re like me, you didn’t know, until later, that Eliot was a pen name and the great English novelist is actually Marian Evans. I learned this decades ago, but beyond that knew nothing about Evans herself. Now, thanks to In Love with George Eliot, by Kathy O’Shaughnessy I’m better ... Read More...
Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
A healer, living alone in the woods, discovers a baby girl left in a basket in a snowy meadow near her home. The infant is guarded by a large black raven, letting the woman know this is no average baby. She is the beginning of the Owens women clan and this is Magic Lessons, Alice Hoffman’s prequel to Practical Magic. Hannah, the healer, takes the girl home, names her Maria and ... Read More...
The Talented Miss Farwell
Sometimes, despite being gifted, life doesn’t work out the way you want. For Rebecca Farwell her father’s ineptitude in business and later, a stroke, mean that despite her talent with numbers college is not an option. Instead, she keeps their farm equipment company in Pierson, Illinois solvent and even pays off the farm when her father dies. All this before she turns 18. But ... Read More...
The Book of Two Ways
Jodi Picoult’s new novel, The Book of Two Ways, straddles the worlds of death and life choices, both in the present, and in the case of death, all the way back to ancient Egypt. Dawn is a woman fifteen years into a marriage when she decides she wants to know what might have happened in the life she had as a graduate student. Unlike other alternate lives novels (Life After Life) ... Read More...
A Girl is a Body of Water
I came upon Jennifer Makumbi’s novel, A Girl is a Body of Water, in my efforts to further diversify my reading. It’s a multi-generational saga centered around a young Ugandan woman named Kirabo. The novel begins in the 1970s when she’s 12. She lives in a sprawling rural compound with her grandparents and many relatives. Although she is surrounded by family, her parents are not ... Read More...
The Woman Before Wallis: A Novel
My love of British royalty is old news. Earlier in the month I read, The Heir Affair, about the fictional modern-day travails of a newly married Prince of Wales and his American bride. I loved it and am happy to be back today with historical fiction about the real royal family. Bryn Turnbull’s The Woman Before Wallis is the best of both worlds—scandal encompassing the royals ... Read More...
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