Category: Book

Book Review: Home Front by Kristin Hannah

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Setting is Washington State in April of 2005. The book starts out with Jolene Zarkades and it is her 41st birthday. The backdrop is the Olympic Mountains and Liberty Bay. She has two girls, five year old Lulu and twelve year old Betsy and husband, Michael who is an attorney. Jolene enjoys running in the mornings, is a very organized person for her family and is a helicopter pilot for The Guard. She enlisted in the army when she was 18 years old and had qualified to flight school helicopter-pilot training.

She had a mother and father who drank and fought and eventually died when she was 17 years old. She did not know what she wanted to do after graduation and decided to enlist in the army. She met her best friend Tami when she was 18 and their love for flying brought them together and they had a strong, bonded friendship. They lived next to each other, got pregnant at the same time with their first child and they went from the army to the Guard when marriage and motherhood made active duty difficult. Twice a week they would go together to practice flying the Black Hawk helicopter, each taking turns at the helm.

Earlier in the morning, when she had gotten back from her run she was getting the girls ready for school and asked where their dad was, he already left. Since it was her birthday it was disappointing that he hadn’t stuck around to at least wish her happy birthday, oh well he probably has something special planned for tonight. She always likes his strong work ethic and seems to make excuses for him.

She deals with 12 year old Betsy’s trying to fit in with the cool crowd and not thinking that her mom is neat, like many twelve year olds. She has a wonderful mother in law who owns a garden store and is very helpful. Michael is in practice with his father but he passed away unexpectedly and is having a hard time dealing with it.

Jolene and Michael speak later in the day and apologized for forgetting her birthday and she said it’s fine as long as we are together. He said he would be home by eight and she said they could have a quiet meal together. He didn’t get home until midnight.

He was having thoughts about what is ahead, what his life could have been if a different path had been taken. Things were becoming rocky at home. Michael has never looked upon the Guard as important, something she really loved. Her daughter doesn’t want her to come to school in her flight uniform. She has asked Michael to come to a birthday party that the group is having for her and he doesn’t want to because they are “her” friends and he has nothing in common with them. Eventually as Michael thinks about his life, he decides that he needs to tell Jolene that he doesn’t love her anymore.

Michael is also taking on a case where a 25 year old murdered his wife. His wife that he adored and they were planning on starting a family. This young man was a model person, had never gotten in trouble and everyone loved him. He had been in Iraq though.

Jolene and Tami got the calls that they were being deployed. She had to break it to the girls, to Michael and her mother in law. Most met the information with disdain. Jolene spent the next weeks preparing the family to take care of themselves. Making a notebook with all the information that she could think of down to what meal to prepare for what day. Her heart is broken over her broken marriage but her sense of duty is strong and she has to do this.

The book goes on and tells the story of what goes on in Iraq and describes what the days are like. She tries to not let them know how bad it is and always tells them that she is not in the fighting, but she is.

The coming of Michael preparing and researching his upcoming court case makes him realize so much. He also has to be there for his girls which took him awhile to realize and to get it together. Then, a horrible accident happened during a flight in Iraq. He and Jolene had limited contact while she was over there and he never told her anything before she left. He was very selfish and wasn’t proud of her and didn’t try to understand. Her problem was that she didn’t depend on him and always was controlling. Both were at fault and had to learn hard lessons.

I whole heartedly recommend this book. It helps the reader understand what being in a war is like, getting injured and the long road to recovery along with the family side of it too.

Book Review: The Sunshine Girls by Molly Fader

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Right out of the shoot, I want to say I loved this book. It addressed so many different aspects of life in 1967. The Vietnam War, friendship, abortion, death, drugs, race, family relationship and secrets.

Iowa, 1967 BettyKay is heading for nursing school because in that era women only become teachers, nurses or wives and mothers. She comes from a farming community where the sons are expected to stay home and help with the family farm and her boyfriend does that. He drives her to school in the family truck and supports her decision whole heartedly and promises to talk to her every Sunday.

Kitty is her roommate with a southern accent. She has style and sarcasm, and it takes BettyKay awhile to get used to her and to have a friendship with her that will last 50 years. Kittys own background story is very interesting and so different from BettyKays.

Jo, (and please forgive me if this name is not correct as I don’t have my book in front of me) is an African American girl. She walked into the school and of course had people ignoring her and having to sit by herself until BettyKay asked her to sit with her and she eventually rounded out the trio of friends. She decided to go to nursing school and serve in Vietnam so her brother would not be sent to the war. She takes no time off to have fun and plans to graduate early. She keeps her eye on the light at the end of the tunnel so to fulfill her family obligation.

Kitty was just glamorous, and flirtatious but would also sew for others on the floor. She was sewing for Jo in return for her notes from class. There was only one phone on the floor and if Kitty would get a call she would go to the phone and hang up on it without even talking to the person on the other end.

BettyKays boyfriend visits one day, with a uniform on and tells her that he has enlisted to go to Vietnam. She is shocked of course, wondering why he didn’t discuss it with her. He said he didn’t want to be talked out of it and that he leaves the next day. They spend the night together and then in two months she realizes that she is pregnant. This was not a surprise in the book, and you will see it coming but what happens after is very interesting and cements the friendships.

The book moves through the early lives and then the adult lives of the three women and back and forth. It weaves and builds a good story that way. I am going to stop here because I hope you pick up the book and get immersed into their lives.

I will tell you that the reason the book is titled “The Sunshine Girls” is that is what new nursing students are called.

Book Review – The Paris Daughter by Kristin Harmel

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This author was recommended to me by my friend Nan. I had said that I like history novels and she said that this author writes them, and she liked her very much. I have been getting some of my reads from the library which is so convenient, but I love the feel of real books in my hand. I also like to refer back to them when writing a review, so it hasn’t stopped me from buying actual paperbacks. Many times I purchase used also.

Here is my review:

Setting is Paris 1939, on the verge of WWII.

Two women, who are American but married Frenchmen.

Elise – is an artist, carves wood and paints and her husband is a well-known artist.

Juliette has a family owned small bookstore along with her husband and children.

These two women are both pregnant and due very close together. They meet in the park one day because Elise has an episode and faints. Juliette came over to render some assistance and eventually she gets Elise back to the bookstore and has the doctor come and examine her and then they become fast friends after that. They both have healthy baby girls who are months apart and they grow up like sisters together. Juliette also has two other children who are boys, and she had a daughter earlier who only lived 13 days and it buried in a nearby cemetery where she visits often.

As the war gets closer to their area Elises husband has been meeting with others underground against the Nazi’s and other bad players of WWII. There are times where he is gone for days, and this is a bone of contention between the two of them because she would like him to be home with them. One day he comes to her with papers that have changed her identity and their daughters also. When she examines the papers, she realizes that the daughters’ papers say a totally different name than hers. He has told her that she needs to get away because she has his last and if she and the daughter are captured then they will be killed. They are looking for him. She needs to leave the daughter in Paris with the papers and go hours away from there.

This tore her up and couldn’t imagine leaving her and walking away. There was a woman in their neighborhood who was Jewish and she made arraignments for her two children to be taken somewhere to be cared for and stay, hopefully, safe. She then went herself away also and finding another place that she had stayed for most of the war until someone ratted them out and they were captured and sent to a concentration camp.

Elise left her daughter with her friend Juliette and family to care for like their own. It was not an easy break at all like you can imagine and she found her way to Ambergene, France to find herself caring for children in a farmhouse where children were kept safe from the war. In the Authors notes at the end of the book she visited this area while writing the book and there was an actual place where the children were kept, and I am sure there were many of these places throughout Europe.

In Paris, back in the little bookstore all was relatively safe and quiet until the Renault Plant was bombed because it was making trucks for the Germans who occupied the country. A stray bomb missed its mark and hit the bookstore destroying it and most of the people in it.

The second half of the book focuses on the characters after the war and how their lives changed and what they did to live. Some moved on, others were mentally challenged, and some had still terrible things happen to them.

It took me a chapter get into the book but then it took off for me and I enjoyed it. Be sure to read the authors notes. It is a good historical novel that was released in June 2023.

Book Review – The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

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I have decided that Kristin Hannah is one of my very favorite authors. Her books call to my interests, history, romance, drama and family, I have read The Great Alone, The Nightingale, Night Road, this one, The Four Winds and I have watched the series made out of Firefly Lane. There are so many more to read and I look forward to each one.

This book starts in the early 1920’s in Texas. In the beginning of the book the farmers in Texas had great crop weather year after year and the wealth and abundance was high. Then the 1930’s came along and rain dried up everything and the dust storms started. They were not able to grow anything, the water dried up, the animals were dying from lack of food and water. The dust storms would just blow in sometimes for days. People would become ill from ingesting the dust into their lungs and stomach.

This was the time of Franklin Deleno Roosevelt and the New Deal but the dust bowl was slow to get recognition to get help. Finally, when a government official from the Conservation Corp. who had been touring the Great Plains, spoke with the farmers he met with resistance. Farmers are very proud and do not want to receive assistance from the government. Also what they were told was that they were part of the reason that caused the dust bowl. That did not go over well, of course. By getting rid of the natural prairie grasses and turning the land into farmland then essentially nothing growing on it the dry topsoil would blow and blow. I remember from my reading of Laura Ingalls Wilder this was mentioned when they lived in Kansas and farming was so hard much earlier. The government wanted the farmers to turn their land back into prairie grasses again and the farmers would be subsidized for this. It was slow to catch on and people started to move to the west coast like California and Oregon with the promise of jobs.

The 25 year old female character in the beginning of the book was named Elsa. Her family was very wealthy and contributed much to the community. Elsa had been unwell when she was young, and the family treated her as if she was still sick and really didn’t think or let her be part of the family. She wasn’t listened to, wasn’t asked to be part of the fun of the family. She spent much time in her room, read a lot and did needlework. She was also made to feel she was ugly and no one would want to be married to her. One day she went to the store and found some red material. She decided to make a dress out of it and went out on the town. She met a young handsome man and one thing led to another and she became pregnant. The family found out who the young man was, took her to their house and dumped her off because she has shamed her family. This is really when Elsa’s life became interesting, and this family became everything to her.

She came to love the farm, learned things, worked hard, wanted to be a good wife and fell in love with her in-laws. She ended up having a little girl, then a boy and another child that passed away. Her husband couldn’t stand the sadness of the dust bowl and left the family, and they were of course, devastated.

Eventually Elsa had to make her way away from the prairie and took her two children to California. To drive hundreds of miles with so many others, across the desert to find a better life. Of course, it is never as good as they think it is going to be but Elsa and the kids learn and become strong and meet others who are in the same boat. These people who once had been wealthy but lost everything. I will leave it here, pick up this book, it is very good to find out how Elsa and her family survive.

Book Review: “Open House” by Elizabeth Berg plus more

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This author also wrote the recently reviewed book Arthur Truluve which was a new publish. “Open House” had a copywrite of the year 2000, 20 years ago. There were similarities to each of the stories as that people who didn’t know each other moved in with each other. There were also spouse and parent deaths as part of the story.

So the story starts out with a woman, Samantha, trying to come to terms with the separation of their marriage that her husband, David, wanted. They were married for 15 years and had one son who was 11 years old. They were comfortable, lived in a nice home in a nice neighborhood. The husband just wanted more and she was happy with her life. She knew that he was becoming distant and wanted to go to a counselor and figure out the problem. He eventually moved out and she was playing the “what if” game in her head. She eventually had to figure out how she could stay in the home, work out the visiting arrangements with her husband for the son and she had to find a job to have an income. Still she needed more income and she decided to take in boarders.

The first boarder was a lady in her early 80’s with a boyfriend. The second was a young introverted Asian student with a very negative outlook on life. The third was a gay man. Through all these people she gained friendships. She also took a job with an employment agency where she had different jobs weekly. One was at a laundromat, another at call center that was not on the up and up and she was happily fired from it.

Through all this she had to see her husband move into a nice apartment, and have a girlfriend with the talk of marriage. She dropped their son off one day and he wanted to show his room and she noted that her husband had a white couch. She had always wanted a white couch but he knocked that idea down, now he has one. All this time she really missed him, missed the life they had, she had taken care of him, really too much. He had this yearning for something else and he couldn’t see how good his life was.

Time went on and she tried dates that her mother set up for her. Her mother was something else and thought her daughter should just start dating right a way, after all that’s what she did when her husband died. It always bothered her daughter and eventually she realized that was how her mother had coped with his death.

Throughout this book we will live the roller coaster ride of Samantha finding her self confidence that she had totally lost due to the separation. She had always given into David and he got whatever he wanted. His family had money and he pretty much got what he wanted there and had strong opinions about having things “just so” for himself.

I liked this book, it didn’t make me want to read it in one day but it had its moments. I would say, “give it a try”.

Our house is in disarray right now. We have lived in our house for 10 years and it is time to paint and update colors. We try to do a couple of rooms each year but due to covid we didn’t have any painting done and are catching up. The last two rooms are in process. The kitchen is a called peppery and the great room will be a sage green.
I had tried the color on the wall and I believe it will be great. I have had to unload the two bookcases to be able to move them away from the wall. I really loved to become reacquainted with books I forgot that I had. The garage sale pile is growing too. The refrigerator has been pulled out and swept under, things have been dusted. It has been a lot of work but needed for sure.
Pavel had to see what I was doing this morning. He is such a sweetheart. Tom and I are getting our second covid shot this friday. I also had a cortisone shot in my knees, and they feel better so still waiting to see how long it lasts. Trying to get through the summer before I have anything done permanantly.
Our newly painted foyer. I love it and the door is a deeper color. We always have a lawn service come out and clean up the landscaping. It lasts all growing season and I have to just trim up plants that grow a little wild. We had a spicket added near our well head, and that tore up some plants and uneven ground. Having that water access will be worth it. The last thing we will have done is getting our carpets cleaned. Then we can sit back and enjoy the hard work.
Here is a great picture of a morning moon that I took recently. I like to have pictures for reference and the sky was so blue and it was clear.

A quote that made me laugh.

An intellectual is someone who can listen to the “William Tell Overture” without thinking of the Lone Ranger.

If you have any questions or want to contact me send a note. I would love to hear from you.

Book Review-Moonlight on Linoleum by Terry Helwig

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This author is good friends with another well know author, Sue Monk Kidd writer of The Secret Life of Bees. She encouraged Terry to write this memoir, she told her that “the world needs your story”.

The authors mother, Carola Jean was given permission to marry at age 14, by 15 she had her first baby, Terry, then two years later another Vicki. By age 18 she decided to leave her husband and the girls father.

She moved her two girls and went to live with her sister Eunice and her daughter Nancy. The two sisters tried to be there for each other but Eunice would take off for a few days on drinking binges. She would come back and shower her daughter Nancy with gifts making up for her absence. In the meantime Carola Jean offered her daughter, Terry….the author to a great Aunt by marriage, she was turned down.

Carola Jean was working at a drug store and met Davy, a doodlebugger who is a seismic driller for oil. Shortly thereafter they got married in East Texas. He was a good man, a hard worker and loved Carola Jean greatly. Seventeen months later another child name Patricia came into the world. Davy had to be away for his work which is the time Carola Jean went to the bars and danced with other men and brought them home. Soon after Patricia was born Carola Jean moved Terry and Vicki back to Iowa to live with their biological father whom they didn’t really remember because they were so young.

So I am sure that you get the picture by now. This is the story of how a woman had to grow up so fast to keep her family together against the odds of her mentally unstable mother. From going to twelve schools, the many marriages of her mother and five siblings, suicide attempts and drug abuse by her mother and so many other roadblocks.

Carola Jean passed away at the age of 40. The book starts out at her funeral and ends with the author in her 50’s, finding her grave again to sit at it and read this memoir to her because she really was the subject of it. She was 25 when her mother died.

Book Review-The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

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Kristin Hannah is one of my very favorite authors. I haven’t found a book that she has written that I didn’t like. I can get lost inside the story and that is my goal for a good book.

The primary setting of this book is Alaska. The father, Ernt was in the Vietnam War and was captured for 6 years. He has a wife, Cora and a daughter Leni. They lived in Oregon, and since Ernt came home from the war he was not the same person. He was angry all the time, couldn’t hold down a job, they were always moving and always fighting.

He received a letter one day from the father of his buddy that died in the war. It stated that the buddy had left him the land and cabin that he owned in Alaska.

Ernt decided that this was the new start that they needed and prepared to move to Alaska. Cora did not have a good relationship with her parents who lived fairly close but she went to visit them before they left to see if she could get some money from them, which came in very handy since there were not a lot of jobs where they were going.

This book gave a vivid view of Alaska and the people who live there and why. It was a journey through Ernts deteriorating mental health. It took us through the domestic violence that he bestowed upon Cora and then Leni. Cora could not give up on Ernt until he had turned his violence onto Leni. The people of the town where they lived banded together and helped, first as newbies who were totally unprepared for the Alaska winters and then to help Cora and Leni get away. I could feel the coldness of the winter and how hard it was to cope, along with the long nights. Very enjoyable book!

Book Review-Making Rounds with Oscar by David Dosa M.D.

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This book was written nine years ago and the setting is the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. The author is the doctor in this facility.

This facility has three floors, and on each floor there are two resident cats. The third floor is the unit that cares for residents with Alzheimers. This is where Oscar lives. Oscar has the run of the third floor, his food and water is at the nurses station and he goes about his business visiting. But there are many rooms and he doesn’t stay long…..only when the patient is about to die. Then he will come into the room and sniff the air, jump up on the bed and curl up beside the patient. He will stay there until they pass on and the funeral home comes and takes the body away. Then he is off duty again. It wears him out and he sleeps the next day away, more so than what cats normally do.

The doctor was not a cat person, and really was skeptical about this. The nurses and aids would try to tell him about Oscar and how he could do this but he took it upon himself to visit families who had Oscar be with them. He wanted their take on this phenomenon. He received views on Oscar but he also became a much more empathetic person from speaking with these people. He understood better what people were going through when their loved one was dying from this disease. Since he also had a disease that may someday render his arms and legs useless it help him to not focus on himself but to live life well. This also gives the reader food for thought, that we don’t know what is ahead of us, what will it be like when after all the years we are married and then to lose your spouse, and not have them beside you anymore.

Every chapter in this book started with a cat quote, two of my favorites:

1.One cat just leads to another-Earnest Hemingway
2. A cat is always on the wrong side of the door-Anonymous
All in all this was a delightful book. I loved that they had cats at this facility, it made it seem very homelike and the reason why people chose to stay there.

Book Review-Without A Doubt by Marcia Clark

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A few years ago I picked this book up at a used book store as you can see by the price tag of $3.00, and decided that this should be a good after Christmas read this year.

In 1995 I had a 4 year old and was a stay at home mom, so I had the time to watch “The Trial of the Century” each day and I was hooked and amazed when he was acquitted. I am still amazed after reading this book of the acquittal.

Marcia stepped away from trials after this one and she has never done another one. She also had young children at the time and was juggling motherhood, this trial, becoming a celebrity, illness, a divorce, and then her spouse filed for petition to get the children.
This is how I remember Marcia Clark in 1995, thin, now I think bordering on gaunt after reading the book, and I understand why. Such pressure this trial was and balancing everything else too.

After the trial she was offered this book deal for four million dollars. She was District Attorney for Los Angeles County, She needed the money it is not the same as having your own law practice. This trial changed her life so much, I am sorry that she only got four million. But it has led to other good things.

Here is Marcia Clark in 2016, 21 years later. She looks good! I had to study the picture before I was convinced that it was her. The trial ended on October 3, 1995 and the book was published in 1997. This book was hard for her to write, to go over the events, still recovering from her illnesses, trying to get her life back to some normalcy. She was mad, mad that the jury took race over evidence. For a trial that lasted from January 1995 to October 1995 it only took the jury 4 hours to come to a verdict.

An excerpt from the books Prologue. This book answered the questions that I have always wondered. I missed that this book came out, or I am sure that I would have read it. When I watched it on television it was broken up, and then the press conferences, it wasn’t a complete picture like this book.

Orenthal James Simpson killed his wife because he was a controlling, wife beating, narcissist. He planned the murder and poor 25 year old Ronald Goldman just happened to be at the wrong place and was murdered horrendously too. Race had nothing to do with it, but everything to do with the verdict.

Simpson had been dumped by his then girlfriend Paula Barbieri, through a voice message. Which by the way Barbieri didn’t tell that little important tid bit until the civil trial. Simpson had been ignored and not invited to dinner by his ex-wife after their child’s dance recital and he had been embarrassed. It all set him off and he planned the murder for that night.

Nicole was never able to totally get away from him like many battered women. He stalked her, watching her have sex after they were divorced, while staring though the window in the bushes. She would call the police after an episode of battering and nothing was every done. They found after her death, in a bank lock box, pictures of herself after she had been beaten. Information that she kept because she knew there was a good possibility that she would be killed and she wanted them to know who did it.

Marcia Clark has since written six other crime books and she has a show on A & E network called ; Marcia Clark Investigates The First 48. I will be tuning in for sure.

As for Simpson he was found liable in the civil trial by the Brown and Goldman family. Here is a good article about it from 1997.

In 2008 Simpson was convicted of an armed robbery in Las Vegas served 9 years of his sentence and was let out on parole in 2017. Here is a good article from the New York Times.

Also here is a pretty good article of where people are now and what they are doing. It does not talk about Nicole’s father though. He has since passed away from Alzheimers disease.

Orenthal James Simpson is now 70 years old, has now spent time in prison, owes more money than he can come up with and has been let out on parole. What is ahead for him?

Nicole Brown Simpson would now have been 59 years old

Ronald Goldman would now have been 49 years old

Two lives taken too soon and so brutally

I ate this book up and could not put it down until it was finished.

Book Review-Sisters First by Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush

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I received this book as a gift last year (2017) and it had just come out.  I didn’t read it until recently and it worked out because I then watched the HW funeral and also Barbara Pierce Bush had gotten married in October and saw the pictures of that.  I follow George H. and Laura on Instagram. 

This book was thoroughly enjoyable.  The stories of the girls growing up and when they lived in the Governors mansion then the White House.  Their college years and when 911 happened.  They loved Kennebunkport and all their Grandparents and spending time with them and their cousins.

The two girls have gone to different universities, found their own careers which are very different but their comfort zones are being back together.  The connection from the womb.  They look very different and hold themselves very different too, but they think very similarly.  Service is a very large part of their lives.  This was a great read!