Review of “A Complicated Kindness” by Miriam Toews

Nomi Nickel is a rebellious 16-year-old in a small Mennonite community in Manitoba, Canada. Her mother and older sister both are missing (we don’t find out why until the end), and now she lives only with her somewhat disconnected dad Ray. Nomi doesn’t have much to look forward to except a job at a chicken [...]

Review of “The Lost Wife” by Alyson Richman

I haven’t read a book that focuses on the deleterious effects of surviving the Holocaust since my heart was torn out by New Lives:New Lives: Survivors of the Holocaust Living in America by Dorothy Rabinowitz. That book is non-fiction, but one wishes it weren’t. This book is fiction although based in fact, and while much [...]

Review of “The Revisionists” by Thomas Mullen

This is a very unusual novel, ostensibly a thriller about time travel and about competing forces from the future trying to preserve or disrupt historical events in our current era. But actually, I would say that’s not mainly what this book is about at all. The author wants us to think about some very fascinating [...]

The Date of Thanksgiving

George Washington, during his first year as first President of the United States, set aside Thursday, November 26, 1789 as “A Day of Publick Thanksgiving and Prayer.” (Washington himself was following an earlier precedent: About seven years prior to Washington’s 1789 proclamation, the United States Continental Congress’ Thanksgiving Proclamation urged the newly-formed American states to [...]

Review of “The Healer’s Apprentice” by Melanie Dickerson

This is a genre blend of historical YA/Christian/romance/fairy tale fiction, set in the Fourteenth Century. Rose, raised by a poor woodcutter and serving as an apprentice to the village healer, somewhat improbably but providentially draws the favorable attention of the Duke of Hagenheim’s two handsome sons, Wilhelm, Earl of Hamlin and his younger brother, Lord [...]

Review of “The Art of Fielding” by Chad Harbach

This book is slow to reveal its intelligence. It begins as if it will be a reverie on the zen of meeting your full potential – in this case, playing baseball. It continues as a comparison of relationships, and in particular, how the age divide can affect the outcome. And it reaches its apotheosis as [...]

Review of “Liesl & Po” by Lauren Oliver

In a forward, Oliver explains to the reader that she wrote this book after the sudden death of her best friend. The world turned gray for her, and it took her months before she felt color and life come back. She re-envisioned her own journey as the story of the little girl Liesl, who has [...]

Review of “The King of Lies” by John Hart

Jackson Workman Pickens, or “Work” is a 35-year-old lawyer who isn’t really happy with his career, but keeps the father and son practice going because of his father, Ezra. Ezra, a successful and rich lawyer, disappeared eighteen months before, right after Work’s mother died in a horrible accident. As the story opens, Ezra’s body has [...]

Review of “The Apothecary” by Maile Meloy

This is a delightful middle grade/young adult book replete with magic and young romance and set in 1952, so there are even history lessons about the Cold War and its impact in the West. Janie Scott, 14, lives in L.A. until her screenwriter parents get blacklisted, and then they all move to London. She feels [...]

Review of “Trespassers on the Roof of the World” by Peter Hopkirk

This little book on the history of the infiltration of Tibet by the West is quite fascinating. Beginning in the mid-1800’s, a number of brave and/or crazy but ultimately unsuccessful explorers and missionaries from England, Russia, America, France, India, and China were “hell-bent” on being the first into the holy city of Lhasa – at [...]