The Berry Pickers

Author: Amanda Peters
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Catapult
Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: July 1962. Mi'kmiq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family's youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field. Joe will remain distraught by his sister's disappearance for years to come.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories than imagination. As she grows older, Normal slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren't telling her. Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.

Review: I've seen some comments that this is the best book a person has read, or it will be their favorite this year, all sorts of rave reviews. For me it was good, not great. I read most of it on a plane and it was a good distraction on a bumpy flight. I will likely not remember it in December when I start thinking about my favorite books.

Lincoln in the Bardo

Author: George Saunders
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing, 2018
Pages: 368
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, the president says at the time time. "God has called him home." Newspapers reprot that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commisterate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state - called in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo - a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Review: I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, but this book was challenging to follow. I had read that it's a complex and sort of twisted novel, so I opted to listen to it thinking the different voices would help. I was wrong. I was in and out of following the plot. What I liked was the historical references and the unique look at the afterlife. On the downside, there were entirely too many characters.

Interesting concept; failure to fully execute.

The Bookshop by the Bay

Author: Pamela Kelley
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2023
Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Jess loves her work as a high-profile lawyer in Charleston. But when her husband cheats, she retreats to her childhood home on Cape Cod with her thirty-year-old daughter, Caitlin, hoping to regroup wit her longtime best friend, Alison. 

Alison's career has taken a hit after twenty years as an editor for the magazine Cape Cod Living. But when she learns her beloved bookstore on the Cape is looking for new ownership, a new dream starts to form. 

As the two friends reopen the bookstore, they also open themselves up to the magic of second chances.

Review: I'm still not ready to dive into a heavy novel since reading The Women. Additionally, a reading group's March Reading Challenge is to read a book with a book club or book store in the title.

This was a fun read for the genre, and put me in the mood for summer.

Go Home for Dinner: Advice on How Faith Makes a Family and Family Makes a Life

Author: Mike Pence and Charlotte Pence Bond
Genre: Christian / Non-fiction
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2023
Pages: 256
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Go Home for Dinner is an in-depth, practical guide to balancing the demands of life with the long-term satisfaction that only a commitment to your family can bring. In this personal account, former Vice-President Mike Pence champions one of his most deeply held beliefs: that faith makes a family, and family makes a life. And, through straightforward advice and personal storytelling, he shows readers how to do the same.

Review: I liked this book. I had no idea what I was going to read a follow-up to The Women so I had to choose a non-narrative genre. Go Home for Dinner worked because it's chapter was its own anecdote and it was a easy reading. 

The title resonated with me when I saw it on the library shelf. Growing up we ate dinner as a family, and although my dad was out of time or away quite often, the majority of the time, my mom still cooked for and ate with us kids. Despite having kids in sports and crazy schedules in general, we eat dinner as a family almost every night. Even when a kid has to eat by themselves due to her schedule, I sit with her while she does.

I remember a dinnertime a couple years ago, we were all just sitting at the table, each of us lost in our thoughts, and my youngest said, What's going on? Why isn't anyone talking about their day?"  We all kind of looked at him in surprise. It struck me then that the kids have expectations for our dinnertime, and we do generally talk about our days and ask about the kids'.

There's more to this book than dinnertime conversations, and I enjoyed each chapter.

I agree with most of Mike's lessons learned and advice, and learning more about him was interesting. You forget sometimes that there are real people with actual lives behind the persona we see on tv. I liked this book. 

The Women

Author: Kristin Hannah
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2024
Pages: 480
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances "Frankie" McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.

As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets - and becomes one of - the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.

But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protestors, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.

Review: While I have loved Hannah's last few novels, I wasn't 100% onboard with reading a novel set in Vietnam. However, I had loved Robert Dugoni's, While the World Played Chess so I knew I needed to give The Women a chance. 

From the first few pages, I was hooked. Really hooked. I started reading in late afternoon, and I had to set the novel down to sleep, but otherwise I would have been able to read the whole thing in one day. 

The novel opens with a graduation party on Coronado Island, a place I just visited this past October, and Hannah does a great job describing the characters and the setting. I felt like I was at the party, and I so wish I had been. From there, her characters travel to Vietnam and eventually back home again. What a story! How does one follow up reading a novel such as this? This novel is perfection.

Other Kristin Hannah Novels
Angel Falls
Home Front
Summer Island
The Enchantment
The Four Winds
The Great Alone
The Nightingale
True Colors