A Place We Knew Well (NetGalley) Susan Carol McCarthy Bantam Books/Random House release date: September 29 I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis through the eyes of a five-year-old. Of course, I knew nothing about it really. There’s a memory of my mom and dad sitting in the living room with a neighbor couple, and I …
While my reason for visiting Pepin was really to check off a Little House site from my bucket list, I was charmed by the village itself and the surrounding area. Driving in on US 61, I turned onto the Great River Road and drove alongside the bluffs, overlooking the Upper Mississippi. Known as the Driftless Area, …
Circling the Sun (NetGalley) Paula McLain Ballantine Books There was a time when I thought I was born in the wrong time and place–a time when I dreamed I was meant to stand on the wide savanna scanning the horizon, when I thought I might have my own antelope calf as a pet and sit …
The Boston Girl Anita Diamant Scribner release date: December 9 In Anita Diamant’s latest novel, eighty-five-year-old Addie Baum tells her granddaughters the story of her life as a girl growing up in Boston in the early twentieth century. Arriving with her family from a small village in Russia, Boston might offer refuge from pogroms, but …
Neverhome (NetGalley ARC) Laird Hunt release date: Sept. 2014 Ash Thompson sets off down the road to fight Mr. Lincoln’s War. The family farm in Indiana was an idyllic place–a barn with a hayloft, a grove of trees, horse corral, “good chairs”. A blissful place for a young couple to start their lives together. But …
Under the Wide and Starry Sky (NetGalley) Nancy Horan Take thou the writing. Thine it is. For who/Burnished the sword, blew on the drowsy coal/Held still the target higher … who but thou? I loved Nancy Horan’s first novel, Loving Frank–I got a glimpse into the life and loves of a woman I knew nothing about, …
The Aviator’s Wife (NetGalley) Melanie Benjamin I was Mom. I was Wife. I was Tragedy. I was Pilot. They all were me, and I, them. That was a fate we could not escape, we women; we would always be called upon by other in a way men simply never were. But weren’t we always, first …
All the Light There Was (NetGalley) Nancy Kricorian Release date: March 2013 Both heaven and hell are here in this world. Maral is fifteen, Armenian, and living in Paris at the time of the German occupation. Life is not easy in the cramped apartment she shares with her mother, father, aging aunt, and brother. Food …
Fever (NetGalley)Mary Beth Keanerelease date: March 2013 Mary Mallon, the main character in Mary Beth Keane’s soon-to-be-released novel, is known to most of us as Typhoid Mary, thought to be the first asymptomatic carrier of typhoid fever in the United States. Mary left a wake of illness and death as she moved from family to …
Mary Coin (NetGalley) Marissa Silver Release date: March 7, 2013 “We never really knew [Grandfather],” Isaac says. “Some people don’t want to be known,” Walker says. “That’s stupid,” Alice says. “Everyone wants to be known. Otherwise it’s just fucking depressing.” Of course, she is right. Everyone wants to be known. Perhaps the ones who conceal themselves most …
This is my symphony 