Author: Chris and Emily Norton
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Zondervan, 2019
Pages: 240
Rating: Recommend
Synopsis: Quadriplegics simply do not walk again - yet millions watched as Chris Norton defied incredible odds and took step by impossible step across his graduation stage. With his fiancee Emily by his side, those unbelievable steps became the start of an extraordinary journey for them both. Told from both of their unique perspectives, this moving story invites you to find, as Chris and Emily have, that God can transform our lowest points into life's greatest gifts.
In a moment, Chris went from a talented college football player with a promising future to a quadriplegic with a 3 percent chance of ever moving or feeling anything below his neck, much less walking again. Determined to prove the doctors wrong, he pushed himself through grueling, daily workouts to achieve his goal four years later: walking across the stage to receive his college diploma with Emily's help, and to the world's astonished applause.
Meanwhile, Emily faced her own challenges as she sunk into a deep battle against anxiety and depression, despite her life's outward blessings. Day by day, decision by decision, Chris and Emily committed themselves to taking the extra step, trusting God, and leaning on the help of others. In a story of courageous faith and grit, this extraordinary couple's journe
y ultimately led them to tackle the seven longest yards - down the wedding aisle and into a new life together.
And what a new life it is: Chris and Emily have adopted five beautiful girls and welcomed foster children - seventeen and counting! - into their home and hearts.
Review: So sweet, so inspiring, such a good book. It's a page turner, and I couldn't read their story fast enough.
Author: Julie Kibler
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Crown/Archetype, 2019
Pages: 400
Rating: Recommend
Synopsis: In turn-of-the-century Texas, the Berachah Home for the Redemption and Protection of Erring Girls is an unprecedented beacon of hope for young women consigned to the dangerous poverty of the streets by birth, circumstance, of personal tragedy.
Built in 1903 on the dusty outskirts of Arlington, a remote dot between Dallas and Fort Worth's red-light districts, the progressive home bucks public opinion by offering faith, training and rehabilitation to prostitutes, addicts, unwed mothers, and "ruined" girls without forcibly separating mothers from children. When Lizzie Bates and Mattie McBride meet there - one sick and abused but desperately clinging to her young daughter, the other jilted by the beau who fathered her ailing son - they form a friendship that will see them through unbearable loss, heartbreak, difficult choices, and ultimately diverging paths.
A century later, Cate Sutton, a reclusive university librarian, uncovers the hidden histories of the two troubled women as she stumbles upon the cemetery on the home's former grounds and begins to comb through its archives in her library. Pulled by an indescribable connection, what Cate discovers about their stories leads her to confront her own heartbreaking past, and to reclaim the life she thought she'd let go forever.
With great pathos and powerful resonance, Home for Erring and Outcast Girls explores the dark roads that lead us to ruin, and the paths we take to return to ourselves.
Review: I loved Kibler's first novel, Calling Me Home, and I've been anxiously awaiting another. I was ecstatic when this was published. It's good.
The Berachah Home was a real place, and while embellished, some of the characters were also real people. Kibler writes with heart, and is well worth your time.
Author: Leila Meacham
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2019
Pages: 576
Rating: Highly Recommend
Synopsis: At the height of World War II, a handful of idealistic young Americans receive a mysterious letter from the government, asking them if they are willing to fight for their country. The men and women from very different backgrounds-a Texan athlete with German roots, an upper-crust son of a French mother and a very wealthy businessman, a dirt-poor Midwestern fly fisherman, an orphaned fashion designer, and a ravishingly beautiful female fencer - all answer the call of duty, but each for a secret reason of her or his own. They bond immediately, in a group code-named Dragonfly.
Thus begins a dramatic cat-and-mouse game, as the group seeks to stay under the radar until a fatal misstep leads to the capture and firing-squad execution of one of their team. But. . . is everything as it seems, or is this one more elaborate act of spycraft?
Review: A new book by the author of my favorite book ever, Roses? Yes, please! Even though I have sworn off World War II novels, I'll make an exception from time to time.
This novel is typical Leila Meacham, complex, sweeping, engrossing, and just plain well-written.
Each of the five main characters has a given name, an alias, and a code name. It's like keeping track of 15 different characters. However, I didn't get all hung up on these details and just enjoyed the story for what it is.
I have seen some reviews stating that this novel requires a suspension of belief, and some plot lines are implausible. I don't disagree, but it is historical fiction. Fiction means that it's made up, and authors do take certain liberties. I don't have a problem with this.
Author: Ann Rinaldi
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010
Pages: 232
Rating: Recommend
Synopsis: Now that her father is dead, CeCe McGill is left to wonder why he risked his life for the ragged slaves who came to their door in the dead of night. When her uncle, an ornithologist, insists that she accompany him to Georgia on an expedition in searh of the rare scarlet ibis, CeCe is surprised to learn there's a second reason for their journey. Along the way, Uncle Alex secretly points slaves north in the direction of the Underground Railroad.
Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous pre-Civil War South, The Ever-After Bird is the story of a young woman's education about the horrors of slavery and the realization about the kind of person she wants to become.
Review: Full disclosure - when this book popped up on Pinterest, it sounded interesting to me. I didn't realize at the time that it's written for ages 10+. Oh well, not the first time I've made that mistake, and since I have children who are 12 and 10, I thought this might be something they'd like to read after me. Never hurts to screen a book, right? Or, if we all read it, we can all discuss it.
I've read better historical fiction written for this age group, but this wasn't bad. The writing is basic, conflicts between the characters are ones that this young age group can identify with, and it's based on a real person. It's a good book.
Author: Tom Friend
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Zondervan, 2018
Pages: 288
Rating: Recommend
Synopsis: As a Major League Baseball coach, Rich Donnelly was dedicated, hardworking, and successful. But as a husband and father, he was distant, absent, and a failure. He'd let baseball take over his life, and as a result his family suffered. That is, until one day his daughter called with harrowing news.
"Dad, I have a brain tumor, and I'm sorry." These words from his seventeen year old daughter, Amy, turned his world upside-down. Now, more than ever, he was determined to put his family first.
The time they spent together in the months before her death will be treasured and remembered forever, but especially the inside joke that because a catchphrase for the Donnelly family as well as the Pittsburgh Pirates team that played in the National League Championship Series that year: "The chicken runs at midnight."
This book shares the heartwarming story behind the odd catchphrase - and how it still lives on a as a symbol for never giving up - and proves that God can work in the life of any person, even through their mistakes and failures.
Weaving baseball history with personal memoir, this book is one that will make you thrill to victory, believe in hope, stand up to cheer for what is good in peoples' lives. IT's a powerful story of redemption and faith that reminds us that God can work in our lives even when we think it's too late for change - and sometimes he sends us signs from heaven if we only have eyes to see.
Review: A biography that reads like a memoir. I might mostly be a baseball fan because my husband is, but this book sounded good to me. I picked it up just to "try it," and really enjoyed it. It's about far more than baseball, although there is a lot of baseball talk, and the author's writing style is good.
Many of the names of players/coaching staff in MLB in the 1970s and 80s were meaningless to me, but others I've heard my husband mention at various times.
What I didn't know when I first picked this up was that my husband and Rich Donnelly have mutual friends. Rich grew up in Steubenville, Ohio, and my husband has taught in public school system there for almost 25 years.
Incidentally, I stayed up past my bedtime to finish this, and it was just a few minutes before midnight.
Author: Sally Hepworth
Genre: Thriller / Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2019
Pages: 352
Rating: Highly Recommend
Synopsis: From the moment Lucy met her husband's mother, she knew she wasn't the wife Diana had envisioned for her perfect son. Exquisitely polite, friendly, and always generous, Diana nonetheless kept Lucy at arm's length despite her desperate attempts to win her over. And as a pillar in the community, an advocate for female refugees, and a woman happily married for decades, no one had a bad word to say about Diana. . .except Lucy.
That was five years ago.
Now, Diana is dead, a suicide note found near her body claiming that she no longer wanted to live because of the cancer wreaking havoc inside her body.
But the autopsy finds no cancer.
It does find traces of poison, and evidence of suffocation.
Who could possibly want Diana dead? Why was her will changed at the eleventh hour to disinherit both her children, and their spouses? And what does it mean that Lucy isn't exactly sad she's gone?
Review: I give this a full five stars. It's layered, it's fiction, it's thriller, it's excellent. This is how you write a novel from different points of view, and with alternating past and present story lines.
Author: Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2019
Pages: 384
Rating: Highly Recommend
Synopsis: Movie stars and paparazzi flock to Cannes for the glamorous film festival, but Grace Kelly, the biggest star of all, wants only to escape from the flash-bulbs. When struggling perfumer Sophie Duval shelters Miss Kelly in her boutique to fend off a persistent British press photographer, James Henderson, a bond is forged between the two women and sets in motion a chain of events that stretches across thirty years of friendship, love, and tragedy.
James Henderson cannot forget his brief encounter with Sophie Duval. Despite his guilt at being away from his daughter, he takes an assignment to cover the wedding of the century, sailing with Grace Kelly's wedding party on the SS Constitution from New York. In Monaco, as wedding fever soars and passions and tempers escalate, James and Sophie - like Princess Grace - must ultimately decide what they are prepared to give up for love.
Review: I loved this novel. Hazel Gaynor is one of my favorite historical fiction novelists. Not totally unpredictable, the way the events unfolded was entertaining and true to life. Only in books and movies is life a neatly wrapped package, and Meet Me in Monaco breaks that mold.
I was also thrilled this book had a "real" title and wasn't just called "The Perfume Shop" or "The Perfumer", or something equally uninspired.
Synopsis: Quadriplegics simply do not walk again - yet millions watched as Chris Norton defied incredible odds and took step by impossible step across his graduation stage. With his fiancee Emily by his side, those unbelievable steps became the start of an extraordinary journey for them both. Told from both of their unique perspectives, this moving story invites you to find, as Chris and Emily have, that God can transform our lowest points into life's greatest gifts.
