Finding Grace

Author: Donna VanLiere

Genre: Memoir

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2009

Pages: 213

Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Finding Grace is the powerful, often humorous, and deeply moving story of one woman's journey of broken dreams. It is the story of how a painful legacy of the past is confronted and met with peace. This book is for anyone who has struggled to understand why our desires- even the simplest ones-are sometimes denied or who has questioned where God is when we need him most. This story is about one woman's unlikely road to motherhood. Finally, it's a book about the "undeserved gift which is life itself." It's the story of "Finding Grace."

Donna VanLiere has entertained millions with her inspirational stories. In her new book, she gives us a candid look into her own life, a life filled with suffering and pain, but one that ultimately finds peace with itself.

Review: I feel almost guilty giving this a "Do Not Recommend" rating because as a whole the story is good. However, this was a scattered memoir most of the way through, and the lack of organization/ editing drove me nuts. 

I also like memoirs in which the writer truly bears his/her soul and VanLiere never got there with this. This feels more like a high level overview.

News of the World

Author: Paulette Jiles

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Harper Collins Publisher, 2016

Pages: 224

Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: It is 1870 and Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.

In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.

Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forging a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.

Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself. Exquisitely rendered and morally complex, News of the World is a brilliant work of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.

Review: This book hit many points of interest for me - time period (post Civil War), a ten year old character (my oldest is 10), captives being returned (Wild West theme and psychologically interesting), etc.

Chapter 1 drew me in and then the story began to drag. At only 224 pages though, I was convinced I could get through it. I also felt the author was setting the reader up and that the novel would pick up again and end strong. It's a National Book Award finalist, for heaven's sake. It just had to get better.

The last chapter was the highlight of this novel, but I spent the majority of this novel bored out of my mind. Maybe it was just the wrong book to read right now. It should have been such a great read.

The Pilot's Wife

Author: Anita Shreve
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Little, Brown, and Co, 2015
Pages: 320
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: A pilot's wife is taught to be prepared for the late-night knock at the door. But when Kathryn Lyons receives word that a plan flown by her husband, Jack, has exploded near the coast of Ireland, she confronts the unfathomable-one startling revelation at a time. Soon drawn into a maelstrom of publicity fueled by rumors that Jack led a secret life, Kathryn sets out to learn who her husband really was, whatever that knowledge might cost. Her search propels this taut, impassioned novel as it movingly explores the question, How well can we ever really know another person?

Review: How many times has this theme been explored, "How well can we really know another person?" 

I gave The Pilot's Wife a chance because it came highly recommended by some friends, and because I had enjoyed The Stars are Fire. This grabbed me by the end of page 1.

Maybe it's not the best book for reading a month before you're set to fly your family of five across the country and back, but I threw caution to the wind. 

I like a book with a twist or two, and this certainly had that appeal. The Pilot's Wife won't go down in history as one of the best novels I've ever read, but it was good. I'd like to read another Anita Shreve novel.

Note: This was originally published in 1998 with a different cover.

Other Anita Shreve novels I've read and reviewed:
The Stars are Fire

The Stars are Fire

Author: Anita Shreve
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2017
Pages: 256
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: In October 1947, after a summer long drought, fires break out all along the Maine coast from Bar Harbor to Kittery and are soon racing out of control from town to village. Five months pregnant, Grace Holland is left alone to protect her two toddlers when her husband, Gene, joins the volunteer firefighters. Along with her best friend, Rosie, and Rosie's two young children, Grace watches helplessly as their houses burn to the ground, the flames finally forcing them all into the ocean as a last resort. The women spend the night frantically protecting their children, and in the morning find their lives forever changed: homeless, penniless, awaiting news of their husbands' fate, and left to face an uncertain future in a town that no longer exists. In the midst of this devastating loss, Grace discovers glorious new freedoms—joys and triumphs she could never have expected her narrow life with Gene could contain—and her spirit soars. And then the unthinkable happens—and Grace's bravery is tested as never before.

Review: My first Anita Shreve novel, and I loved it. From the first page I was hooked. So much about the synopsis appealed to me. Maine, 1947, a conflagration, a woman with two small children forced to make it on her own, a mystery about what happened to her husband. . .the plot as a whole intrigued me.

I'm not one to find editing mistakes in a novel, but at one point Grace is called Claire. The author also states in one chapter that Grace had no money, but in another Grace wonders how much money is in her purse. Nothing had happened in the intervening chapters that would have put money in the purse. I also felt that Grace and the doctor's relationship could have been explored further, but the reader is left wondering. Perhaps, as in real life sometimes.

On the last page of the epilogue, Shreve threw in one last line upending the ending she had just set up. Annoying, but perhaps genius as well; allowing the reader to write the ending in his/her head.

Other Anita Shreve novels I've read and reviewed:
The Pilot's Wife