Love & Saffron by Kim Fay novel follows two women in 1960s America as they discover that food really connects us all, and that friendship and laughter are the best medicine. When twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter, as well as a gift of saffron, to fifty-nine-year-old food columnist Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. As the two women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and unexpected tragedies in their own lives. In their letters, Joan and Imogen explore their experiences and their thoughts about love, joy, sadness, and death, and the result is […]
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Small World Book Review
Jonathan Evison’s Small World tells the stories of a train’s passengers in 2019 and their mid-nineteenth-century ancestors after a disastrous crash. There’s Walter Bergen, a veteran train conductor on his last run before retiring, and a descendent of Irish twin orphans. Malik, a young basketball star, is the descendent of a slave. Then there’s Jenny, a corporate consultant whose ancestors were Chinese immigrants, and Laila, a Native American, fleeing her abusive husband. Small World chronicles 170 years of American nation-building from many points of view across place and time. This inventive work explores the immigrant experience, and that of the modern era in the United States. I read and reviewed Jonathan Evison’s last […]
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July 2022 Reads and Reviews
We Norwegian Americans love to say “Uff da.” The phrase is used to express many emotions: exasperation, annoyance, surprise, anger, exhaustion, enthusiasm, dismay, and even joy. It also works as an uber-mild curse. So what does this have to do with my July book reviews? Well, today I am expressing my frustration for posting this in September rather than July. UFF DA! I was on a road trip for much of the month and only eked out seven books, but a few of them were amazing. Here goes. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi “We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when […]
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What Happened to the Bennetts Book Review
“I knew my life would forever be divided into Before and After.” Lisa Scottoline, What Happened to the Bennetts. The Bennett family is on their way home from 15-year-old Allison’s lacrosse game when a pickup truck tailgates them on a dark stretch of road. They are forced to stop, and two men jump from the pickup and pull guns on Jason, demanding the car. What happens next will change their lives forever. Later that night, Jason and his family receive a visit from the FBI. The agents tell them that the carjackers are members of a dangerous drug-trafficking organization, and Jason and his family are now in their crosshairs. The […]
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Homegoing Book Review
“We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.” — Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing. Homegoing traces a single bloodline across seven generations, beginning in eighteenth-century Ghana and ending three hundred years later. This epic family saga follows two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, who are born into different villages and never know one another. One of them […]
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The Final Case Book Review
From the author of Snow Falling on Cedars (PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Winners, 1995) comes a disturbing legal drama. In this fictionalized account, a thirteen-year-old Ethiopian girl adopted by a conservative, white fundamentalist Christian couple is found dead of hypothermia a few feet from the back door of her home in Seattle. Her adoptive parents are put on trial for murder. An octogenarian criminal attorney defends the mother, Betsy Harvey. His son narrates the story as he drives his father to and from court. In 2013, a jury found Carri and Larry Williams guilty on almost all the charges brought against them: manslaughter of Hana, and for Carri, homicide by […]
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The Foundling Book Review
“I trust you’re familiar with the type of girl I’m referring to,” she tells the audience. “You’ve seen her slinking in and out of bawdy houses and illegal drinking establishments… she may seem normal enough—in fact, she’s often quite pretty. Until you see her again, a few years later, ruined and destitute, begging for handouts, surrounded by her own diseased and illegitimate children.”—Ann Leary, The Foundling. So says Dr. Agnes Vogel, the administrator of the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. It’s 1927 and eighteen-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as Dr. Vogel’s secretary at an institution for mentally disabled women. She’s immediately in awe of […]
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Facing the Mountain Book Review
“They couldn’t know that they were about to see things and do things that would change them utterly, things they would regret, things that would sear their souls, and things they would cherish beyond all reckoning. They couldn’t yet understand that they were about to step off the edge of the world.” — Daniel James Brown, Facing the Mountain. From the author of Boys in the Boat comes another phenomenal read, this one begins as the U.S. enters WWII. At the time of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, approximately 125,000 Japanese Americans lived on the U.S. Mainland and 200,000 immigrated to the territory of Hawaii. Some were […]
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Path of the Assassin Book Review
People who took themselves too seriously not only were no fun, but could also be very dangerous.—Brad Thor, Path of the Assassin. I read Brad Thor’s debut, The Lions of Lucerne last year (originally published in 2002). I was obviously late to the party, but I was excited to find a new political thriller author. In Path of the Assassin, Navy Seal turned Secret Service agent Scot Harvath is taking on one of the world’s deadliest terrorist organizations. After rescuing the President from kidnappers, Harvath vows to capture or kill those responsible for the plot. A trail of clues points to Hashim Nidal, the planet’s most ruthless terrorist, who has […]
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The Diamond Eye Book Review
“Snipers must make themselves calm in order to succeed, and that is why women are good at sharpshooting. Because there is not a woman alive who has not learned how to eat rage in order to appear calm,” Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye. With each of her historical novels, Kate Quinn gets better. After her 2021 book, The Rose Code, I didn’t think that was possible, but The Diamond Eye is a stellar achievement. In the snowbound city of Kiev, history student Lyudmila “Mila” Pavlichenko’s life revolves around her job as a library researcher and caring for her five-year-old son, Slavka. But when Hitler invades Russia, she forges a different […]
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