Fiction Review: The Women

My first audio book for this year's Big Book Summer Challenge was The Women by Kristin Hannah. I always enjoy her novels and had heard good things about this one, but this book astounded me. It was an absolutely stunning novel that will stick with me for a long time.

Frances "Frankie"  McGrath is just twenty years old in 1965 when she graduates from nursing school and decides to follow in her brother's footsteps. He's in the Air Force and has been sent to Vietnam, so Frankie signs up for the Army Nurse Corps. Her father is always talking about their family's proud history of service to the country (he even has a family "hero wall" in their house), but when Frankie announces her decision, he's not proud of her; he's angry. Both of her parents feel that Frankie should stay home, get married, and have children like a respectable woman, but Frankie heads to boot camp. A year later, she is shipped out to Vietnam. Frankie has almost no nursing experience, and in boot camp, the nurses were mostly taught how to roll bandages and change bed pans. But this is real life and real war. Frankie meets her new roommates, Barb and Ethel, and that very first day, she's thrown into the deep end when helicopters with wounded soldiers begin to arrive. She's immediately surrounded by blood, missing limbs, and dying boys. Though ill-equipped at first, Frankie soon becomes a surgical nurse and is eventually one of the most skilled nurses there. 

The three women finally return home, with their minds filled with the horrors of war, and try to go back to their lives. They return to a changed America, where veterans are no longer revered but reviled, and war protestors scream terrible things at them. Frankie's father will barely speak to her, and her mother expects her to settle down and get married. But Frankie suffers from horrible nightmares and crippling flashbacks (what would later be known as PTSD). Worst of all, when she says she was in Vietnam--even at the VA--people tell her over and over that there were no women in Vietnam. Her life is a mess, and she doesn't know where to turn,. She, Barb, and Ethel have become lifelong friends, and they're the only ones who truly understand. Frankie's path to normalcy and health is a long, slow, twisting one, but by the time the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial is dedicated in 1982, both she and the nation have begun to heal.

Where to start? Everything about this novel is completely engrossing and powerful. It's clear the author did a lot of research for this novel, including first-person accounts by women nurses who went to Vietnam and returned home, as well as details about the time periods. In an author's note, she explains that she's wanted to write this novel for a long time but felt she wasn't a good enough writer to do the story justice until now. It was worth the wait. The details--both during the war and of Frankie's experiences afterward--are vivid, horrifying, and realistic. I was very young during the war, but I remember my cousin and uncle being drafted and going to Vietnam, an experience that changed their lives forever. In fact, my uncle died from cancer (and suffered lots of other health problems) caused by Agent Orange. 

But this novel isn't just about the horrors of war. The reader experiences everything along with Frankie: the comradery among the troops, the need to let go and have fun once in a while even in the midst of war, the fierce friendships formed, and even the passion and love that develop between people put in such pressure-cooker situations. The audio was very well done, narrated by the talented Julia Whelan, and completely immersive; I couldn't bring myself to start another audio for a week after finishing it because it was still living in my head. This was an amazing, epic novel I won't forget that brings to light the contributions (and heavy price paid) of these brave women whose role and impact was mostly overlooked. It's a stunning, powerful story and so important to tell.

480 pages, St. Martin's Press

Macmillan Audio

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

Diversity Challenge

Travel the World in Books - Vietnam

Literary Escapes Challenge - California

Big Book Summer Challenge

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. The sample is from an early chapter, at Frankie's brother's going-away party.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

     
  

Fiction Review: Ask Again, Yes

For Big Book Summer last year, I did my first-ever Buddy Read with Nikki, a Booktube friend of mine who had the channel Red Dot Reads (she's on hiatus now). We read The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles together, though we live on opposite sides of the world (she's in Singapore), and we discussed it by leaving each other voicemails. That experience was so wonderful, and we both got so much more out of the novel this way, that we decided to do another Buddy Read. We picked a novel that was on both of our shelves, Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, and once again, our enjoyment of this excellent multi-generational family saga was greatly enhanced by talking about it with each other. 

The novel begins in 1973 with two young Irish-American men, Francis and Brian, training together for the NYPD and then being assigned as partners when they're rookies. Francis had recently immigrated to the U.S. (though he was born there), and Brian was the son of Irish immigrants. Time moves forward, and they each marry: Brian marries Anne, a recent Irish immigrant like Francis, and Francis marries Lena, who comes from a close-knit Polish family. Francis and Lena move to Gillam, a small, rural town outside of the city (but an easy commute on the train). Lena is lonely out there, without her friends and family from the city. In 1975, Lena is nursing their new baby, Natalie, when she sees a moving truck pull up next door. Brian and Anne move in, and Lena hopes she'll finally have a friend, but Anne keeps to herself and seems moody. The years pass, and Francis and Lena have two more girls, Sarah and Kate, while Anne suffers a devastating miscarriage before finally having a boy, Peter. Though Anne disapproves for some reason, Peter and Kate become best friends and grow up together. Then, when they are in eighth grade, something horrible happens that affects every member of both families for decades to come.

All of that happens before page 100 (and I've obviously kept it vague to avoid spoilers). The novel follows Peter and Kate and their parents for thirty years after the devastating, life-changing incident. Keane has carefully crafted each character, and the reader gets different perspectives from each of them. While the characters are very well-developed, there is also a lot that happens in this novel, including some very surprising twists. It's a propulsive, engrossing read. In fact, Nikki and I traded voicemails after each of the three sections of the book, and we were careful not to read ahead so we wouldn't spoil anything for the other. That was very hard to do sometimes, to just stop reading at the end of a section! 

This would be an excellent book group book because there is so much to discuss here, as Nikki and I discovered: trauma and its effects on generations, steps in the healing process and how it's different for everyone, each character's thoughts and actions, plus the beautiful writing in the novel. We each tagged quotes that we shared with each other that revealed basic truths about humanity. I can't share any of them here because they'd reveal too much, and this is a novel you must discover for yourself. The ending was absolutely perfect, with more quote-worthy observations. We agreed that this is a novel about life and all its messiness: joys and sorrows, love and loss, grief and healing. I can't wait to read Keane's next novel, The Half-Moon, and meet the author at Booktopia next month!

388 pages, Scribner

Simon & Schuster Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Alphabet Soup Challenge - A

Diversity Challenge 

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. Sample is from the prologue, about Francis and Brian.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

   
 

Memoir Review: The Invisible Girls

A few years ago, I downloaded The Invisible Girls by Sarah Thebarge from the SYNC annual summer audio book program and finally began listening to this beautiful, moving memoir that I finished reading in print.

Sarah, twenty-seven, was riding the train into downtown Portland, Oregon, one day when she met two adorable little girls and their exhausted-looking mother. Sarah was kind and played with the girls (one of whom fell asleep in her lap) and began talking to the mother, Hadhi. That was the start of a unique friendship that enriched the lives of all involved. Hadhi was a Somali refugee and had five little girls under twelve at home (the older three were in school when they first met). She invited Sarah to their apartment, where Sarah soon understood that the family was barely surviving. There was no food in the house, no furniture, and Hadhi had no means of support. Her abusive husband had recently left them, after a particularly violent episode, and Family Services had moved the family for safety to a new subsidized apartment. But Hadhi was lost in this country and culture that was completely unfamiliar to her, and she knew little English. The older girls were learning English in school, but they also felt out of place in their new country and had been placed in grades well below their age-levels due to the language barrier. All five of the little girls, though, were full of joy and adored Sarah (and Justin Bieber!). Sarah began helping the family in any way she could, though she didn't have much herself. She had recently moved to Portland from the East Coast after a horrific, harrowing years-long experience with breast cancer that had left her physically and emotionally damaged. As Sarah got to know the family and helped them adjust to life in the U.S., she found that their love and friendship helped to heal her.

When I first read the synopsis, I worried this might be a sort of "white savior" type of story, but that's not it at all. It's a story about the power of kindness and connection to heal all kinds of trauma. While Sarah did buy some groceries and other necessities for the family (the girls were so excited to receive socks and underwear as gifts!), much of what she did for this family was from her heart, not her pocket. And in return, they helped her to recover from her own traumas. Sarah had almost completed a Master's degree in journalism when she got cancer, and she is a talented writer, bringing the reader along not only on this journey of friendship and belonging but on everything that came before it (she endured a lot). Brought up in a fundamentalist Christian family with a pastor father, she could relate to some of the challenges that Hadhi and the girls dealt with. She understood what kinds of support the girls needed to grow up to be strong, educated, independent women (which their mother very much wanted). It's a beautiful story of the bonds between two very different but damaged women, and the joyful little girls they both love.

(Note: The audio production was excellent, and I was very much enjoying it, but I only had about half of the audio book downloaded, which was likely my fault and not SYNC's. My son would say "I suspect user error, Mom!")

287 pages, Jericho Books

Hachette Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Nonfiction Reader Challenge - Memoir/Biography

Diversity Challenge

Literary Escapes - Oregon

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

     
  

Teen/YA Review: I Am Not Alone

I'm a longtime fan of Francisco X. Stork, who wrote (my reviews at the links) Irises, Marcello in the Real World, The Memory of Light, Disappeared, and its sequel, Illegal. Like The Memory of Light, his latest novel,  I Am Not Alone, provides a realistic, enlightening picture of what it feels like to struggle with mental illness. I was engrossed by this excellent audio book.

Alberto is an undocumented older teen, living with his sister, Lupe, and her baby in Brooklyn. They live with Lupe's abusive boyfriend, Wayne. Alberto wants her to leave Wayne, but they rely on him and live in his apartment. Alberto works hard for Wayne, doing maintenance and repair work on the apartments he manages, and sends most of the money he earns back home to Mexico, to help support their family, including a sick sister. His real talent--and love--is for pottery. Lately, though, Alberto has begun to hear a man's voice talking to him, and it's saying disturbing things. It's not like thoughts in his head, but like a voice outside of him that no one else can hear. Even more strange is that it talks to him in English, while he still thinks mostly in Spanish. One day, Wayne sends Alberto to do a job in a nice apartment in another building, and he meets Grace. She is about his age but seems to have a perfect life. She's an excellent student, on track to be valedictorian and attend Princeton pre-med, and she has a wealthy, perfect-seeming boyfriend. Beneath the surface, though, Grace has been struggling ever since her parents' divorce. She's no longer sure about anything in her life or even if she's on the right path. Alberto and Grace meet that day and become friends, each confiding their fears to the other, as Alberto's voice gets more urgent, trying to force him to do terrible things, and harder to ignore.

As with all of Stork's novels, this one fully immerses the reader/listener in the characters' lives, here showing what it feels like to deal with the disturbing voices Alberto hears (which an author's note explains might be schizophrenia or any of several other mental illnesses). The topic is handled here with compassion, as are Grace's problems. Alberto's undocumented status is simply a fact here, that complicates his getting the help he needs, rather than a main subject. The two new friends find comfort and support in each other during difficult times for both of them. There is also plenty of suspense here, as Alberto starts to have memory black-outs and ends up running from the police who suspect him of a horrific crime. All of that tension, though, comes to a satisfying conclusion for both main characters. The audio production was excellent, with two narrators reading Alberto's and Grace's chapters. I was fully engaged in this moving, suspenseful story, and I learned a lot about mental illness.

(Another outstanding YA novel about this kind of mental illness is Challenger Deep by Neal Schusterman (my review at the link), based in part on the author's son's own experiences with schizoaffective disorder and accompanied by drawings from his son that show his declining mental health.)

320 pages, Scholastic

Scholastic Audio

This book fits in the following 2024 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - I

Diversity Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - New York

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/ordownload it from Audible. The sample is from the start of the novel and gives a great introduction to Alberto's life.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (same audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

  
  

Fiction Review: Rabbit Cake

Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett was my last full-length novel of the year, read in the last days of December, and I absolutely loved it. I didn't review every book I read last year (a new approach for me), but I wanted to review my favorites and this qualifies! I met Annie Hartnett in May at Booktopia 2023, an annual event I attend every spring in Vermont at the Northshire Bookstore. I loved her novel Unlikely Animals (my review at the link) and really enjoyed talking to her, asking questions, and listening to her talk about the writing of the book. So, I wanted to read from her backlist, and my husband gave me Rabbit Cake for my birthday. This warm, funny, deeply moving novel lived up to my expectations!

Elvis, named after Elvis Presley because she shares his birthday, is ten years old when her mother sleepwalks to the nearby river and drowns. For the next eighteen months, Elvis, her fifteen-year-old sister, Lizzie, and their father each deal with their shock and grief in different ways. Like their mother, Lizzie is also a chronic sleepwalker, and that increases and worsens in her grief, leading to ever more bizarre sights greeting Elvis and her dad in the morning, including terrifying spates of sleep-eating and egg stealing. Lizzie also decides to set a world record for baking rabbit cakes, following in her mom's footsteps, since she always made a three-dimensional rabbit cake for special occasions. Their dad discovers a local parrot in the pet store who mimics his wife's voice and comments and brings it home. He also starts wearing his wife's lipstick and bathrobe at home. Elvis is pretty lost, mostly worried about her dad and her sister, and determined to uncover the details of her mother's death. She loves animals (her mom was an animal biologist), so she continues working on the book about animals and sleep that her mom was writing and starts volunteering at the local zoo. But this family has a long way to go through their grief and coping to heal and reconnect with each other.

As in Unlikely Animals, Hartnett here has created wonderfully real characters struggling with some very serious issues, but she writes about it all with a hefty dose of humor (listen to the audio sample to get a feel for the tone). You can probably tell from my description above, which is just the tip of the iceberg, that these are some very quirky characters--and that's where some of the humor comes from--but aren't we all a little weird in our own ways? In spite of their flaws, the characters are very likable, and smart, precocious Elvis is a wonderful narrator. We see her family's issues through her eyes, as she strives to understand grief. The family goes through some big challenges along the way, from a runaway to a stint in a mental hospital to some stolen rats, but in the end, they find each other again and start to heal. I enjoyed every minute of this tender, compassionate, hilarious look at grief and family ties. It was the perfect way to end my reading year!

327 pages, Tin House

Blackstone Audio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - Alabama 

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. Listening to it makes me want to reread the book!

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too - a different one).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

    
  

Fiction Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

I absolutely loved The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, when I first read it back in 2015 and again in 2019 (my review at the link). So, when I heard about Zevin's latest novel, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, I immediately knew I had to read it and wasn't surprised by all the rave reviews that followed. I enjoyed every minute of this unique novel. This moving story of a special friendship spanning thirty years is beautifully written and immersive.

When Sam was twelve years old, he was in a horrible car accident. His mother died, and he was left with a mangled foot that would require on-going surgeries and give him constant pain throughout his life. Six weeks after the accident, his grandparents and doctors were worried because he hadn't spoken a word. One day, Sadie walked into the game room on the pediatric ward of the hospital. She was visiting her sister, who was being treated for cancer. Sadie sat down next to Sam, watched him play his game, and started talking to him about it. Sam talked back, and a friendship was born. They both loved video games and spent more than 600 hours together playing games while Sam was in the hospital. Then, they had a falling out. Years later, while attending Harvard, Sam spotted Sadie on a subway platform in Boston. He'd heard she was going to MIT. They resumed their friendship and took their love of gaming to the next level, designing a unique video game together. Sam's roommate, Marx, becomes the game's producer, and before they'd even graduated from college, they were a huge success. Their game was a hit, and they were launched into a world of wealth and fandom. Sadie and Sam kept collaborating on designing games, with Marx by their side, but all sorts of challenges arose over the years, from failed games to personal tragedies to ambition, love, and jealousy. Can Sam and Sadie withstand all of this and remain friends?

This is an epic story of friendship, following Sam and Sadie across decades of their lives, from California to Boston and beyond. As in A.J. Fikry, Zevin creates such full characters that you feel completely absorbed into their story. She's an excellent writer, with a talent for finding just the right words for each sentence, realistic dialogue, and descriptions that make you feel like you're there. You don't have to be a gamer to enjoy this book; the last video games I played were Space Invaders and Pac Man as a teen, but I still found their game designs and world-building fascinating. Besides friendship, Zevin also tackles love, living with a disability, loss, and the ups and downs that define every life. I marked many thought-provoking passages that I could relate to. But at its core, this warm, emotionally complex novel is mostly a great story, peopled by in-depth, likable but flawed characters and beautifully written. It's an engrossing story to get lost in. I'm going to miss Sam and Sadie.

397 pages, Alfred A. Knopf

Random House Audio

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Monthly Motif - White-out (white cover or wintry theme) - winter was a prominent feature during their years in Cambridge!

Diversity Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - Massachusetts

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/ordownload it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (audio sample here, too).

 

Print and e-book from Amazon.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

    
  

Teen/YA Review: Crash and Bang (Visions trilogy)

Pulling books off my shelves for my large "pile of possibilities" for the R.I.P. Challenge and Series September last month, I noticed a forgotten YA novel: Bang by Lisa McMann, book two in her Visions trilogy. Lisa McMann is an old favorite author of mine (I loved her YA series Wake, standalone Cryer's Cross, and middle-grade series The Unwanteds, links to my reviews), so I requested book one of this newer trilogy, Crash, from my library and read both of them in September. They lived up to my high expectations, and I read these gripping paranormal thrillers in record time!

Jules is sixteen and lives in Chicago but doesn't have a typical teen life. She spends her free time helping out in her family's Italian restaurant, and her best friends (only friends?) are her older brother and younger sister. They're the only ones who really understand what it's like to live with their father's severe depression and hoarding. But Jules is managing OK until she starts to see frightening visions whenever she looks at screens. In her repeated vision, she sees a snowplow jump the curb and hit a restaurant full of people, followed by a huge explosion. Her vision ends with nine body bags in the snow, and she can see a face in the last one, of her old friend and current crush, Sawyer. As her visions increase in intensity and frequency, showing up in mirrors, windows, signs, and more, she searches them for clues and figures out that it's Sawyer's family's Italian restaurant that she's seeing exploding violently. The problem? She and her siblings have been forbidden from even speaking to Sawyer and his family because of some age-old feud among the adults in the families. How can she pinpoint the exact time of the impending disaster and warm Sawyer and his family in time? Or will the increasingly violent visions make her go crazy first? What if her dad's mental illness runs in the family?

No spoilers of Crash's ending, but in book two, Bang, Jules' visions have ended, but someone close to her begins to see different--but similarly horrifying-- visions of another impending disaster. Together, they are trying to figure out what is being seen so they can stop it from happening.

As always, McMann has created a bizarre but believable paranormal premise in the midst of a very realistic situation. The tension here ramps up higher and higher as Jules' visions worsen, while she tries to navigate high school, working in her parents' restaurant, and dealing with her dad's issues. She's a fully-developed character, with wonderfully close relationships with her siblings as the three of them band together to keep their family's secrets. There is even a sense of humor in these novels; did I mention that Jules has to drive a food truck with giant meatballs on top to school? That humor is on display in the audio sample below, as Jules lists "5 Reasons Why I'm Shunned." I love the way this novel is a thriller, with great suspense, while it also has so much emotional complexity, dealing with issues like mental illness. Lisa McMann has done it again, with an original premise and engrossing page-turner, and I can't wait to read book three in the trilogy, Gasp.

Crash, 256 pages, Simon & Schuster

Bang, 272 pages, Simon & Schuster

These books fit in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge (Bang)

Diversity Reading Challenge (both)

Literary Escapes Challenge - Illinois (both)

R.I.P. Challenge (both)

Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher in return for an honest review. My review is my own opinion and is not influenced by my relationship with the publisher or author.

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. This sample highlights the humor in the novel as well as some background about Jules and her siblings.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (there's also an audio sample here, a different one, about the visions).

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 
  
 

 

Nonfiction Review: Destiny of the Republic

My neighborhood book group met last week to discuss Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard. I've mostly been reading fiction for the R.I.P. Challenge, but with that subtitle, this nonfiction book fit the darker themes of the challenge! We all very much enjoyed the book and had a lively discussion.

Most people, myself included, know very little about the 20th president of the United State, James A. Garfield, because he was only president for six months in 1881 and spent the last two of that bed-ridden. Here, the author provides a dual narrative, of both the president and his assassin, along with some fascinating history about medicine and inventions of the time. Garfield was a remarkable man who was born into poverty but went on to become well-educated and work in academia. He graduated from law school, worked as an attorney, and was a major general in the Union Army during the Civil War. Afterward, he represented Ohio in Congress, though he had no intention of running for president until a unanimous vote at the Republican National Convention made him their nominee. Meanwhile, a man named Charles Guiteau was becoming more and more delusional, thinking that he was an important, powerful man who helped get Garfield elected and then getting angry when he wasn't appointed ambassador to France. Madness is definitely the right term for this man who eventually shot Garfield in the back in a Washington train station. Garfield didn't die of the shot, though. He died of horrible infection after a power-hungry, ignorant doctor insisted he be the president's sole caregiver. Alexander Graham Bell even got involved in trying to save the president's life, but Garfield died in September, leaving Chester A. Arthur as the new president.

I knew absolutely nothing about Garfield when I started this book and not only learned a lot but was gripped by the story right from the start. The author weaves together the dual narratives of Garfield and Guiteau, including their early lives, Garfield's rise to the presidency, and some of the key turning points that fed Guiteau's delusions. I was especially riveted by the account of the Republican National Convention in 1880: it took hundreds of votes to come to consensus and ultimately, Garfield was nominated in spite of insisting he didn't want to be (two things that would never happen today!). Along the way, the author also provides fascinating historical details about inventors of the day, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, and Dr. Joseph Lister, who first applied Germ Theory to medicine and discovered ways to prevent infection during and after surgery. All of these various threads eventually come together in a perfect storm that doomed Garfield. I listened to this book, and the audio production was excellent, pulling me right into the story from the first chapter. My book group gave this book an average rating of 8 out of 10, so it was a hit with almost everyone. For another engrossing historical story from Millard, our group also enjoyed River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey. 

368 pages, Doubleday

Random House Audio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Nonfiction Reader Challenge - History category

Literary Escapes Challenge - District of Columbia

R.I.P. Challenge

 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. Purchases from these links provide a small commission to me (pennies per purchase), to help offset the time I spend writing for this blog, at no extra cost to you.

 

Visit my YouTube Channel for more bookish fun!

 

Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores (there's also an audio sample at the link).

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!

 
  

Fiction Review: The Reading List

I love listening to the Book Cougars podcast, and their second quarter read-along choice was The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams (this year's theme for their read-alongs is books about books). This warm, moving novel about the power of books to connect people came to me at just the right time.

Seventeen-year-old Aleisha is reluctantly working at her local library in Wembley, London, for the summer. She's not much of a reader, but she took the job at the urging of her older brother, Aidan; the library is a special place to him that he has loved since he was a young child. The siblings now work together to care for their mother, who is confined to the house due to mental illness. It's a difficult life for both of them.

One day, a widower named Mukesh comes to the library for the first time and timidly approaches the desk to ask Aleisha to recommend a book. His wife died a year ago, and his three adult daughters worry about him but have busy lives of their own. His wife was an avid reader and always had a stack of books from the library on her nightstand. Their granddaughter, Priya, is just like her grandma, and Mukesh thinks that perhaps reading will help him to become closer to Priya and to his late wife, whom he misses so much. He found a library copy of The Time Traveler's Wife under their bed and read it. The novel opened a whole new world for him, helped him better understand his own loss, and gave him a glimpse of what his wife and Priya love so much about books. But he has no idea what to read next. When he asks Aleisha, she doesn't know what to say, but she found a list of books inside a book she was shelving earlier, so she suggests the first one from the list, To Kill a Mockingbird, and checks it out for him. Knowing the lonely man will return and want to talk to her about the book, Aleisha begins reading it also. That begins their own private book club, and the two isolated, struggling people both begin to reach out and connect, with each other and with their community.

The list Aleisha finds:

Just in case you need it:

To Kill a Mockingbird

Rebecca

The Kite Runner

Life of Pi

Pride and Prejudice

Little Women

Beloved

A Suitable Boy

(links to my own reviews, where available)

While Aleisha and Mukesh are at the heart of this story, that list makes the rounds of the community, and short, interstitial chapters provide a quick glimpse into the lives of other people who find the list of books in various places. In all, the novel weaves together the story of a community and of people coming together via the books they read. Mukesh and Aleisha are both suffering, and their healing journeys are highlighted here. It's a beautiful, heartwarming story, but it doesn't shy away from difficult topics like death, mental illness, and suicide. I read this novel during a difficult time in my own life, grieving the loss of our 13-year-old grand-nephew, and like the characters, the gentle but honest tones of the novel helped me to cope. It's all about people and connections, but it is also a love letter to books (I've read all but two of the books on the list). I greatly enjoyed experiencing these books (many of them my own favorites) through the eyes of these characters just discovering the power of reading for the first time.

400 pages, William Morrow

HarperAudio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Alphabet Soup Challenge - R

Diversity Challenge (and East Asian mini challenge)

Travel the World in Books - UK

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Listen to a sample of the audiobook here and/or download it from Audible. It sounds like a wonderful audio production, with multiple narrators.

 

Or get this audiobook from Libro.fm and support local bookstores.

 

You can buy the book through Bookshop.org, where your purchase will support the indie bookstore of your choice (or all indie bookstores)--the convenience of shopping online while still buying local!