Dena Nordstrom is on the verge of making it big as a female newscaster in 1970s New York, but she’s not dealing well with the stress of the job and some unresolved issues from her past. This was enjoyable enough. My favorite parts featured the extended family living in Elmwood Springs, Missouri. I kept reading Continue Reading…
Gustine is a dress lodger (lower class prostitute in an upper class dress) in Sunderland, England in the 1830s. One night she meets Dr. Henry Chiver, a surgeon in disgrace who has promised his small group of students that he will find a human body for them to dissect and study. Unfortunately, there is still Continue Reading…
Sara Stevenson has shamed her family and has been exiled to a remote Scottish island for months. Along with her lady’s maid, Kate; Kate’s husband; and the lightkeeper, William, she will have to weather a long winter, unsure of the fate of her lover. I thought this was pretty good. It’s not exactly my typical Continue Reading…
The Cantrell family has lived in Hoot Owl Holler in the mountains of Virginia for as long as anyone can remember. They love hard, play hard, and suffer deeply. There doesn’t seem to be any in-between for them. Oral History follows…let’s call it three…generations of Cantrells, starting with handsome Almarine and his run-in with a Continue Reading…
Author Mardi McConnochie imagines what the lives of the Brontë sisters would have been like if they had grown up on a remote island/penal colony off the coast of Australia. In this fictional tale, their father is the warden of the colony, paranoid to the point of madness and with a giant God-complex. He makes Continue Reading…
**Very minor spoilers for Big Stone Gap** Ave Maria has been married for eight years now. She and her husband have a beautiful daughter, but they’ve also had some very difficult times. Now Ave feels that they’re growing apart. Everyday life has gotten in the way of love, and it’s time for both of them Continue Reading…
Seabiscuit. An American Legend. I think the only reason I even know the horse’s name is because of the movie they filmed a few years ago. I’m obviously not a horse-racing fan, right? I don’t even remember why I grabbed this at a library book sale. A friend here on GR must have given it Continue Reading…
Julie Jacobs is stunned the day she finds out that her great-aunt Rose, who raised her and her twin sister Janice, has died. She’s even more surprised when she finds out at the funeral that her real name is Giulietta Tolomei and Rose wanted her to go back to Siena, where she was born, and Continue Reading…
Owen Meany is a strange child. Almost freakishly small, and with a terrible voice, he is huge on faith, but not so crazy about religion. But Owen has faith that God made him the way he is because he has a Higher Purpose to fulfill. This came awfully close to being a 3 star read Continue Reading…
Catherine de Medici. I picked this up not knowing exactly who she was, knowing only that if she was “de Medici,” there would be lots of the drama that make the best historical fiction. Her parents died when she was young; she was held hostage in a convent in Florence when the Medicis were overthrown; Continue Reading…
We first meet Crystal Spangler when she’s a dreamy twelve-year-old Virginia mountain girl, in the summer before she begins high school. We follow her as her dreaminess leads her to look for meaning, or for herself, in all the wrong places. I adore Lee Smith’s work. She writes about the mountains of Virginia. I’m in Continue Reading…