“Waves begin their journey thousands of miles out at sea. They accumulate shape and power from winds and undersea currents for ages. And so, when you see the women in Iran screaming for their rights, please remember that the force and fury of our screams have been gathering power for years.” ― Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran. Marjan Kamali’s The Lion Women of Tehran is a breathtaking journey through three decades of friendship, betrayal, and redemption, set against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran’s political upheavals. Spanning from the 1950s to the 1980s, this poignant novel explores the unbreakable bond between Ellie and Homa, two young girls from vastly […]
Read more...Tag Archives: adversity
The Refugee Ocean: A Symphony of Struggle and Survival
The Refugee Ocean intertwines the stories of two refugees, Marguerite Toutoungi and Naïm Rahil, across time and continents through history, loss, and music. Marguerite (who is based on the author’s cousin) is born in 1922 Beirut, and dreams of becoming a composer, but societal and familial expectations keep her tethered. A romance with a Cuban tobacco farmer leads her to a turbulent life in Havana during the Cuban Revolution. Decades later, Naïm Rahil, a teenage piano prodigy from Aleppo, flees war-torn Syria with his mother, seeking solace in suburban America after losing his family and part of his hand in a bombing. Their stories are linked by Annabel Crandell, a […]
Read more...
From Soccer Mom to Prison Inmate
“The Many Lives of Mama Love is a heartbreaking and tender journey from shame to redemption, despite a system that makes it almost impossible for us to move beyond the worst thing we have ever done.”—Lara Love Hardin, The Many Lives of Mama Love. Soccer mom Lara Love Hardin had a seemingly perfect life until the police knocked on the door of her million-dollar home. Behind her suburban facade, she was funding a heroin addiction by stealing her neighbors’ credit cards. Hardin’s memoir, The Many Lives of Mama Love, blends despair and comedy as she recounts her journey. “I carefully pick through the bottom-of-purse debris until I find some small […]
Read more...
A Mother’s Quest to Find Her Children.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4. Eleanor Shearer’s debut novel, River Sing Me Home, begins on the Providence sugar plantation in Barbados in 1834. The master announces the end of slavery, but the slaves must work as apprentices for another six years. Rachel, born on the plantation, escapes in the dead of night to find her five children, sold away years ago. Her dangerous journey takes her from Barbados through the dense forests of British Guiana across the sea to Trinidad. Along the way, she receives help from former tobacco harvesters and runaway slaves. In Bridgetown, Rachel reunites with her mute daughter, Mary Grace. They travel with a seaman named […]
Read more...
A Stirring Historical Mystery
Clark and Division by Edgar Award-winner Naomi Hirahara brings readers into the poignant struggles of a Japanese American family in 1944 Chicago. After spending two years in the Manzanar internment camp, twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her family face another blow—the mysterious death of Aki’s sister, Rose, ruled a suicide by police. Convinced of foul play, Aki is determined to uncover the truth, thrusting us into a tale woven with historical intricacies and the harsh realities of racism and displacement faced by Japanese Americans during and after World War II. Hirahara’s portrayal of 1940s Chicago is rich in historical detail, offering a vivid backdrop to the personal and communal challenges Aki […]
Read more...
What the Fireflies Knew
“The house is silent and smells like a mix between the old people that kiss my cheeks at church, and the tiny storage unit where all our stuff lives now.”—Kai Harris, What the Fireflies Knew. After her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit, almost-eleven-year-old Kenyatta Bernice (KB) and her teenage sister, Nia, are dropped off by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing. The kids don’t know where she’s gone or if she’ll ever come get them. Over that sweltering summer, KB’s entire world is upended. Even her sister, always her […]
Read more...
My Favorite Reads of 2022
I read 106 books in 2022, so narrowing it down to my very favorites was a challenge. The list below comprises my crème de la crème in a great year of reading. You’ll find a variety of genres set in the United States, Mexico, Ghana, Ukraine, China, England, Poland, Austria, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, and Vietnam. Most of these were 5-star reads for me, but one was a 4.5 rounded up to 5. I hope you find something you love! Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid “We live in a world where exceptional women have to sit around waiting for mediocre men.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, Carrie Soto is Back. […]
Read more...
A Sacrifice of Praise
Sometimes it seems impossible to look past the pain, but we serve a mighty God.
Read more...
The Sanctuary Book Review
Sanctuary is the remarkable true story of how faith turned one lost man’s life around with the help of the rescue animals who loved him. In the small Irish village of Liscarroll, Patrick Barrett helped his family run a sanctuary for abandoned and abused donkeys. He did poorly in school and his headmaster beat him. Patrick only felt truly accepted in the presence of the donkeys and he could read their body language and communicate in ways they could understand. Falling prey to the cultural norms of life in an Irish village, Barrett had his first drink at age seven and came to depend on alcohol to numb his anxiety. At […]
Read more...
A Hidden Life
Last fall I watched a gorgeous movie titled A Hidden Life about Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer and devout Catholic who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II. Franz, his wife, Fani, and their three young daughters lived outside the small village of St. Radegund and were important members of the tight-knit rural community. In 1943, he and other able-bodied were called up to fight for Germany. When recruiters asked him to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler, Jägerstätter refused and was arrested and taken to prison in Linz where the most “dangerous” prisoners were housed. His family was ostracized and belittled by their friends […]
Read more...