“Just as a single rainstorm can erode the banks and change the course of a river, so can a single circumstance of a girl’s life erase who she was before.” Shelley Read, Go as a River. At the tender age of twelve, Victoria Nash finds herself thrust into a world of loss and responsibility. Her mother, aunt, and cherished cousin tragically die in an auto accident, leaving Torie to shoulder the household duties for her father, angry brother, and an embittered war-wounded uncle confined to a wheelchair. They live on a flourishing peach farm nestled in the very real town of Iola, Colorado, near the serene Gunnison River. Torie’s existence […]
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Hello Beautiful
Ann Napolitano, the brilliant writer behind Dear Edward (2020), has done it again with her latest novel, Hello Beautiful. While I normally steer clear of Oprah’s Book Club picks, Ann Napolitano is phenomenal, so I gave it a go. We meet William Waters as a young boy in a house silenced by tragedy. His parents can hardly look at him, so it’s a relief when he earns a scholarship to college far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, an ambitious young woman. He is soon engulfed in her boisterous close-knit Italian family, and embraced by sisters Sylvie, a romantic bibliophile, Cecelia, an aspiring artist, and Emeline, […]
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