Thursday, June 30, 2016

Review: The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

I am not much of a gardener myself but when I was small, I knew the names of most of the common flowers where we lived, I am intrigued by the language of flowers, and I have always thrilled to beautiful gardens. The idea of a hidden or lost garden appeals to me more than you can know and I'm sure the title and cover of this book drew me in immediately. I have to say that as a conditional because I have had it sitting on my bookshelf unread for more than a decade. I can't explain why it sat for so long but getting the push to finally read it was wonderful, especially as it is a gorgeously written story. In fact, Helen Humphreys' latest novel, The Evening Chorus was one of my favorite reads of last year. The Lost Garden has the same seductive, mesmeric feel to it that the newer novel does and I loved immersing myself in the lush and gorgeous language of this beautiful novel.

Gwen Davis has worked for years at the Royal Horticulture Society in London when she volunteers for the Women's Land Army as a way to escape the Blitz. Gwen is generally quiet, almost invisible, ill at ease with others, and convinced of her plainness and undesirability so being in charge of an outfit of young women, especially young women determined to make the most of life in the midst of wartime, is a stretch for her. When Gwen arrives at the country estate where she is to be in charge, she finds that a Canadian regiment is also on the grounds as they await orders and her Land Girls have made themselves at home with the men. Initially Gwen wants no fraternizing, after all; the Land Girls are there to plant potatoes and do their part producing food for the war effort, but she quickly realizes that a lighter hand will return better results. It doesn't hurt that she is intrigued by Raley, the Canadian Commander. With the help of Jane, whose fiance is missing in the war, Gwen starts to soften, learning not only how to lead but also how to connect personally. When Gwen finds a lost garden, one not on any map of the estate and seemingly unknown to the others there, she sets about bringing it back to life, trying to understand the motivation behind building it. Divided into three distinct parts labeled loss, longing, and faith, Gwen tends to the hidden garden as she herself traverses these three states of experience and feeling alongside the corresponding plants blooming and fading.

Humphreys is a master at beautiful language and dreamy imagery and she has drawn a lovely, introspective novel about love and memory and connection. Like the growing season of the gardens, the time the characters have together is fleeting and there is a melancholic and elegiac feel to the novel. Watching Gwen bloom, watching her open her heart to others, to desire, to love is exquisitely done. She is certainly the central character of the novel, the other characters acting as accents. And it is Gwen's personal growth that is carefully detailed in quiet ways, like her giving each of the Land Girls the nickname of a potato variety, starting by calling them exclusively by these nicknames, but slowly coming to use the young women's real names as the book comes to its quiet close. Humphreys writes stunningly of nature and the poetry to be found in plants, weaving nature into this very human story of a desire for connection and love, tying Gwen and the gardens together wonderfully. This is a graceful and stunning novel, reaffirming for me that I should pull the rest of Humphreys's novels off my shelf sooner rather than later so I can submerge myself again in the beauty and magnificence that is her writing.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

The Trouble With Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon. The book is being released by Scribner on July 12, 2016.

Amazon says this about the book: Part coming-of-age story, part mystery, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is a quirky and utterly charming debut about a community in need of absolution and two girls learning what it means to belong.

England, 1976. Mrs. Creasy is missing and the Avenue is alive with whispers. The neighbors blame her sudden disappearance on the heat wave, but ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly aren’t convinced. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, the girls decide to take matters into their own hands. Inspired by the local vicar, they go looking for God—they believe that if they find Him they might also find Mrs. Creasy and bring her home.

Spunky, spirited Grace and quiet, thoughtful Tilly go door to door in search of clues. The cul-de-sac starts to give up its secrets, and the amateur detectives uncover much more than ever imagined. As they try to make sense of what they’ve seen and heard, a complicated history of deception begins to emerge. Everyone on the Avenue has something to hide, a reason for not fitting in.

In the suffocating heat of the summer, the ability to guard these differences becomes impossible. Along with the parched lawns and the melting pavement, the lives of all the neighbors begin to unravel. What the girls don’t realize is that the lies told to conceal what happened one fateful day about a decade ago are the same ones Mrs. Creasy was beginning to peel back just before she disappeared.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Review: The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan

You might not think that hospice and war have much in common. But they do. Both concern death in one way or another. Even so, they are opposites on the spectrum. One's goal is to accept and die with dignity. The other's goal is the subjugate and force violent death. There is no winning a battle in hospice; the only release comes with death. In war, a soldier can survive, but the cost is high indeed. Stephen P. Kiernan's newest novel, The Hummingbird, showcases both hospice and war and the lessons to be learned from both.

Deb Birch is a hospice nurse who has just been assigned to a new patient. Barclay Reed is an academic whose work was discredited due to accusations of plagiarism. His area of expertise is the Pacific theater in WWII and he's dying of kidney cancer. He's difficult and proud, a curmudgeon with everyone but he develops a grudgingly respectful relationship with Deb. Deb is very good at what she does, defusing difficult situations and finding ways for her patients to accept death with dignity. But she can't seem make this same connection with her husband. Michael is back from his third deployment in Iraq and unlike after previous tours, he doesn't appear to be healing at all from the horrors he was asked to witness and to commit. Their marriage, once so strong, is fraying under the stress. So daily Deb goes from work with a dying man to home and a husband who is dying inside. She is holding tight and trying to discover ways to walk judgment free beside her husband. Astonishingly, Barclay Reed and his unpublished manuscript about a Japanese pilot who dropped incendiaries on the Oregon forests during WWII might be giving her the tools to do just this.

There are three distinct plot threads here: Deb caring for Reed, Deb and Michael's agonizing emotional distance as a result of his combat experiences, and the story of pilot warrior Ichiro Soga during and after the war. The tale of Soga inspires Deb's attempts to help Michael, which in turn offer Barclay Reed a vital lesson even in his waning days. In a few instances the lessons from one to the other are too easy.  Even so, they do show us how we can learn from all human experiences, how to accept, how to forgive, and how to go forth to whatever awaits us with courage and peace. That the story of Ichiro Soga is based on a true WWII story, although fictionalized to serve this particular plot, is fascinating indeed. Deb is really the main character here though, caring as she does for the people in her life with secondary charactrs Reed and Michael adding dimensions to her as a caregiver.

Kiernan has written a touching novel about healing, forgiveness, and peace. His rendering of PTSD and the ways in which we routinely fail our returning soldiers, so unprepared for regular non-combatant life, is heartbreaking and scary. Deb's job as a hospice nurse is one that has to be difficult, especially as she tiptoes around Michael, trying to reach him in ways similar to the ways she is trying to help Reed reflect back on the important things in his life. Just as these characters grapple with what and who we carry with us, out of guilt or love, throughout our lives, the reader will also carry the lessons they impart. An emotional and nicely done novel about the peace we can find in death or acceptance, this has something both for historical fiction fans and those interested in the post war lives of our soldiers.

For more information about Stephen P. Kiernan, take a look at his web page or like him on Facebook. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Review: Remember My Beauties by Lynne Hugo

Caring for parents as they age is stressful for anyone. Add in a failing family farm, siblings absent either physically or because of addictions, and favoritism where the caregiver child is not the favorite and caring for those parents is exponentially harder to do. This is the case in Lynne Hugo's sharply written, dysfunctional family novel, Remember My Beauties.

Jewel checks in on her parents every day, cleaning, feeding, and administering their medicine and she cares for her father's beauties (the horses) too all while struggling with issues in her own floundering marriage to Eddie and with her drug addicted daughter, Carley, and working in a job that doesn't feed her soul. She is stretched as thin as it is possible to be and she's deeply unhappy, as is evidenced by her hacking off her beautiful hair in the opening of the novel. She feels, and in fact seems to be, unappreciated by everyone in her life. When her parents inform her that her no-good alcoholic brother, the brother she loathes, is coming back and moving in with them, Jewel erupts, unwilling to continue to see her parents and the horses she loves if Cal is anywhere around. This line in the sand sets up unlikely coalitions and drives the central conflict of the novel.

The narration of the novel jumps amongst almost all of the characters, even including the horses, but only Jewel narrates in the first person. This makes her feelings and reasons the most intimate and immediate for the reader.  Each of the other characters' stories occur in relation to Jewel.  The perspective jumps to and from the other characters can be a little disconcerting at times and changes the narrative tension quite a bit. Hugo has drawn Jewel quite sensitively so that the decision she makes at the breaking point is certainly understandable. The rest of the characters are not quite as noble as Jewel and it is hard to be positive about their collusion with each other against her. The family is completely and totally dysfunctional, riddled with drugs and alcohol and terrible secrets making Hack and Louetta's aging and loss of independence that much sadder. Each character knows what he or she wants and is so enmeshed in his or her own needs that it is hard to read although this same selfishness makes them all so very human. As each pursues that which they want above all, they do all start to open to others, to grow, and to change and there is hope for these damaged characters to see clearly once more.

For more information about Lynne Hugo, take a look at her web page, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

Wrong Highway by Wendy Gordon
Remember My Beauties by Lynne Hugo
The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood
The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
You Have Never Been Here by Mary Rickert
West With the Night by Beryl Markham
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
Riverine by Angela Palm
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
I Will Find You by Joanna Connors
The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
The Winter War by Philip Teir
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
Bertrand Court by Michelle Brafman
This Side of Providence by Sally M. Harper
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Different Kind of Daughter by Maria Toorpakai

Reviews posted this week:

A House For Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi
The Royal Nanny by Karen Harper
Wrong Highway by Wendy Gordon

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
My Confection by Lisa Kotin
Put a Ring on It by Beth Kendrick
One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon
The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth
The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley
Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson
American Housewife by Helen Ellis
The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman
The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
Closer All the Time by Jim Nichols
The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett
Over the Plain Houses by Julia Franks
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Forsaken by Ross Howell Jr.
The Cosmopolitans by Sarah Schulman
The Spice Box Letters by Eve Makis
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
A Very Special Year by Thomas Montasser
Specimen by Irina Kovalyova
One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Telling by Zoe Zolbrod
The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera
The Boy Who Speaks in Numbers by Mike Masilamani
Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick
What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas
After the Dam by Amy Hassinger
Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
Umami by Laia Jufresa
The Education of a Poker Player by James McManus
Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse
Mrs. Engels by Gavin McCrea
The Iceberg by Marion Coutts
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Remarkable by Dinah Cox
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
The Inland Sea by Donald Ritchie
The Unseen World by Liz Moore
The Silver Spoon by Kansuke Naka
Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine by Alex Brunkhorst
The Honeymoon by Dinitia Smith
The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter
The Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum
Bottomland by Michelle Hoover
This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance by Jonathan Evison
The Lake by Perrine Leblanc
Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
A Girl From Yamhill by Beverly Cleary
If You Left by Ashley Norton
The Heart You Carry Home by Jennifer Miller
And Again by Jessica Chiarella
Man by Kim Thuy
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
Remember My Beauties by Lynne Hugo
The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood
The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Secrets of Nanreath Hall by Alix Rickloff came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A mother, the daughter she left behind, and family secrets uncovered during WWII, what could be more appealing?

All Is Not Forgotten by Wendy Walker came from St. Martin's Press.

This novel about a girl attacked and then given a drug to make her forget the horrific events seems sadly relevant these days. I expect it to raise some important questions even though it sounds like a tough read.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Review: Wrong Highway by Wendy Gordon

Siblings can be so very different. They can look like they came from different families. They can face different expectations from those around them. Even similar seeming siblings are different people and life shapes them differently. Sometimes they seem to go such opposite directions in order to differentiate themselves from each other, to be unique, to be individuals. Some of the differences though, are a function of their inherent personalities and while they may not be obvious on the outside, underneath they lead to very different choices and lives. In Wendy Gordon's novel Wrong Highway, younger sister Erica, called Rikki by her family, has spent her whole life rebelling against those things that define her older sister Debbie and although their adult lives might look somewhat similar, Erica is traveling down a completely different highway than Debbie, what turns out to be a very wrong highway indeed.

Erica has always been more free-spirited and impulsive than her buttoned up, rule following older sister. Right from childhood they've made very different decisions in their lives. Now as adults in the mid nineteen eighties, Erica is the married mother of four. Her husband works for a high powered investment firm and he's very successful at what he does. She spends her days running her kids around and going to her exercise class. Debbie is also married with one troubled, teenaged son. Her husband works as on-air talent at a local radio station and she works part time in a beauty salon. Both women live out on Long Island not far from their parents. On the surface at least, their lives are not so dissimilar but underneath, they are still the very different personalities they've always been.

Erica is bored with her life. The biggest rush she's had recently is childbirth. Otherwise she spends her time in stultifying mundanity, listening to her sister's domestic and health problems. One family dinner, she realizes that her nephew Jared is high and that knowledge lights a little spark for her. Acting under the guise of the cool aunt who cares about his well-being more than his overbearing parents, she asks him to help her get her own pot and gets him talking to her about his home life. And this is where she starts making wrong decision after wrong decision for him, for her sister, for herself, and for her own children.

Erica as a character is immature and entirely unlikable. Following along with her is worse than watching a train wreck and the reader wants to not only slap her, they will want to smack all those around her who cannot see just how out of control she has grown. Her husband is consumed with his own issues; his company is under federal investigation and people are going to go to jail so he has no idea what is going on with Erica. Her sister is juggling her resentful son, her husband's hair-trigger temper, and a long standing resentment about her sister's seemingly golden life.

Gordon has drawn a tiny sliver of the glittering wealth and expensive drug culture that is part of the definition of the eighties here and she's done it well. Suburban Erica's decent into unacknowledged addiction and terrible decisions is also depicted well. And Gordon is a skilled writer. But the story itself is disagreeable and each of the characters are insufferable. It's hard not to read along and condemn spoiled, unpleasant, and pettish Erica as well as everyone around her. Debbie comes off as a whiny, not very smart hypochondriac. And her husband is a nasty, slimy piece of work. When every decision, by every character, is one that the reader knows is wrong, it's hard to get much enjoyment from the read. The major climax of the novel doesn't manage to redeem any of the characters and changes the tone of the book quite a bit. The ending is rather open but at least marginally positive, and perhaps too easy at that given the downward spiral of the rest of the novel. The book is well written but I couldn't enjoy it. I kept hoping for something that would draw me in; unfortunately that just didn't happen.

For more information about Wendy Gordon, take a look at her web page. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Review: The Royal Nanny by Karen Harper

You've probably seen the adorable pictures of the current royal children and if you're an Anglophile, you've oohed and aahed over those pictures. But pictures don't tell what it's like to be around these special and different children all the time. They don't tell what it's like to raise them or to love them. Karen Harper's newest novel, The Royal Nanny, isn't about Prince George and Princess Charlotte's nanny but instead fictionalizes the life of Lala, the nanny to their great-great grandfather and his siblings.

Charlotte Bill is a young woman when she is engaged as the under nurse at York Cottage. She is to help the head nurse with David and Bertie and their soon to be new sibling. She is completely devoted to her small charges, loving them dearly even as she must make them toe the lines that their parents require and she will defend them with the zeal of a mama bear. Although Queen Victoria is still on the throne when the newly christened Mrs. Lala comes to York Cottage, the children are already being groomed for their eventually very public life. Lala must try to balance her own personal desires, including a budding romance with one of the games keepers on the estate, with her duty and care of the growing brood of children, a brood which eventually numbers six. She loves each of the young Yorks but her special child is the last and youngest, Johnnie.  He was a frail baby who had a very rough birth, doesn't appear to have the same mental capacity as his siblings, and suffers from epileptic seizures, all of which combine to make him the hidden child, rarely spoken of or seen.

Lala was in fact a real person who did indeed come to serve the Yorks and their children. She was the nanny to two future kings, Edward VIII and George VI, and was privy to the intimacies of family life with two more kings, Edward VII and George V. Told in first person by Charlotte/Lala, the reader is plunged into the personal lives of the royals. She witnesses the bickering and antagonisms between fathers and sons, the distance between spouses, and had a front row seat to British history. But all of these things, even the parts she disapproved of, are told through her loving eyes. Genuinely caring for the children and the trials they faced, Lala recounts tales about the children that correspond closely to adult traits that history has recorded for the more public of the Yorks, tales that might not be terribly flattering but that keep these rarified children human.  She chronicles the ups and downs of life in the nursery and to some extent beyond.  Woven into the happiness she derives from raising her charges, is the conflict she feels personally and just what sacrifices of her own hopes and dreams she's willing to make in order to continue to care for David, Bertie, Mary, Harry, George, and Johnnie.

The novel is well-researched and offers readers a fascinating glimpse into royal life at the time and all of the conflicts swirling about in the family. Harper has done a good job balancing Charlotte's devotion and her regrets, asking the question whether duty and love for the children should supersede a chance at marriage and her own family. Life in the royal household, and especially Johnnie's so carefully hidden life is brought to life sympathetically and any reader who thrills to news of the royals will be engrossed. The pieces about Lala's own personal life sometimes felt a little contrived or repetitous although they were necessary to show the very real choices she had to make and how those choices shaped her entire life, even once her charges were too old to need a nanny. Life with the royals could certainly be glamorous but there was a heavy cost and readers will come away feeling sorry for the personal cost not only to Lala but to the children who bore the weight of a nation on their small shoulders from the moment of their births. Hopefully things have changed some for the better now but even if they haven't, this is a page turning read that definitely has a place in the beach bags of historical fiction readers this summer.

For more information about Karen Harper, take a look at her web page or check out her page on Facebook. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Review: A House for Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi

Deciding to have a baby is oftentimes an easy decision to make. Actually having a baby is not nearly so easy, especially for the countless women who have fertility problems of one sort or another. Whether they have trouble getting pregnant in the first place or suffer the heartbreak of miscarriage after miscarriage, becoming a mother can be fraught for so many. For those women who look at more complicated routes to motherhood, adoption, fertility treatments, or surrogacy, the emotional cost is high. Amulya Malladi's newest novel, The House For Happy Mothers, examines the cost of surrogacy, financially, emotionally, and socially for both the biological mother and the surrogate.

Priya is an Indian-American woman living in Silicon Valley. She wants a baby more than almost anything else in her life but she and her husband, Madhu, have suffered several devastating miscarriages. So Priya has decided that their best recourse now is to use a surrogate mother to carry their baby to term. She's researched the idea and joined online forums for women using surrogates and she's chosen the doctor, clinic, and mother that she wants, all near Madhu's family in India. Her own mother thinks that her decision exploits a poor woman in India for her womb and she is incredibly disapproving while Priya's husband is willing to do as she wants even if he isn't completely convinced or as desperate for a baby as she is.

Asha is the woman who will carry Priya and Madhu's baby. She is married to Pratap and they have two young children. Pratap is a painter and they live in a tiny hut in a small village. Asha wants more for her children than she and Pratap can provide; in particular she wants to be able to afford to send their oldest son, a clearly gifted child, to a good school. Only by earning money as a surrogate can she afford to do this. Her sister-in-law has been through the surrogacy experience herself and encouraged Asha to do it. Pratap is supportive as well, especially seeing the apartment that his brother and sister-in-law bought with the proceeds of Kaveri's surrogacy. Even so, Asha has doubts about the ease and rightness of the process, emotionally and morally, as well as thanks to the cultural taboo surrounding it requiring her to keep this pregnancy and the baby's fate a secret. Before her doubts overwhelm her though, she is committed and carrying Priya and Madhu's baby.

The novel flips back and forth between Priya's and Asha's lives. Each of them have their own concerns and anxiety over the entire situation in which they find themselves. Priya is elated that she will finally be a mother but she worries that her own mother's concern that she is exploiting a poor woman is not entirely off base. She's also terrified that something will go wrong with the baby and pregnancy even as it progresses halfway around the world from her. Asha wonders how she can remain aloof enough from loving the child that grows under her heart to simply hand the baby over to strangers after nine months and she wonders if the financial compensation is really enough to give away a piece of herself. The surrogacy itself gives both women hope for something they would otherwise never have: for Priya, a child, and for Asha, the means to appropriately educate her amazing son. As the pregnancy progresses, each woman feels the strain of her decision on her marriage and on her emotional well-being. Occasionally interspersed in the text are posts from the internet support forum that Priya has found since no one in her actual life understands what she is going through. Asha's support comes mainly from the other surrogate mothers living with her at the Home For Happy Mothers. In both cases, there are women whose opinions on each aspect of the process are in accord with and those who differ from both Priya's and Asha's feelings.

Malladi fairly presents two sides to the complicated ethical dilemma presented by the idea of seeking a surrogate in a developing or third world country. The cost for surrogacy is far more than just the financial outlay or income involved and the characters of both Priya and Asha clearly demonstrate that. In fact, the issue encompasses class and privilege, family politics, and gender roles, as well as the strength and determination of mother love. Because the currency of surrogacy is the female body there is much at play here and Malladi addresses several aspects of this very emotionally freighted practice. The move from a purely clinical transaction to a strange but ultimately fleeting (by definition) intimacy is well handled and makes the reader really think about both sides of the situation. Both major characters, Priya and Asha, are imperfect and human in their portrayal and in their feelings about this complicated issue. There are moments that felt a bit repetitive and the forum posts, while giving easy insight into Priya's state of mind, came off as more flip sounding than the rest of the novel. Priya's and Asha's pasts are integrated pretty seamlessly into the present of the text and dividing the whole into three distinct trimesters of pregnancy, each with its own concerns and anxieties was a fun structural decision. The novel is an emotional look at the international politics of babies, the cost of surrogacy, the drive towards motherhood, and the abiding hope that so complicates all of this.

For more information about Amulya Malladi, take a look at her web page, check out her page on Facebook or follow her on Twitter. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's officially summer. You'd think life would slow down, wouldn't you? It hasn't. And I don't expect it to any time soon. ::sigh:: This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
A House For Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi
The Royal Nanny by Karen Harper

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
You Have Never Been Here by Mary Rickert
West With the Night by Beryl Markham
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
Riverine by Angela Palm
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
The One-in-a-Million boy by Monica Wood
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
I Will Find You by Joanna Connors
The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
The Winter War by Philip Teir
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
Bertrand Court by Michelle Brafman
This Side of Providence by Sally M. Harper
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Different Kind of Daughter by Maria Toorpakai
Wrong Highway by Wendy Gordon

Reviews posted this week:

Follow the River Home by Corran Harrington
The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
My Confection by Lisa Kotin
Put a Ring on It by Beth Kendrick
One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon
The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth
The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley
Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson
American Housewife by Helen Ellis
The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman
The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
Closer All the Time by Jim Nichols
The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett
Over the Plain Houses by Julia Franks
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Forsaken by Ross Howell Jr.
The Cosmopolitans by Sarah Schulman
The Spice Box Letters by Eve Makis
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
A Very Special Year by Thomas Montasser
Specimen by Irina Kovalyova
One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Telling by Zoe Zolbrod
The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera
The Boy Who Speaks in Numbers by Mike Masilamani
Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick
What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas
After the Dam by Amy Hassinger
Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
Umami by Laia Jufresa
The Education of a Poker Player by James McManus
Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse
Mrs. Engels by Gavin McCrea
The Iceberg by Marion Coutts
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Remarkable by Dinah Cox
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
The Inland Sea by Donald Ritchie
The Unseen World by Liz Moore
The Silver Spoon by Kansuke Naka
Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine by Alex Brunkhorst
The Honeymoon by Dinitia Smith
The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter
The Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum
Bottomland by Michelle Hoover
This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance by Jonathan Evison
The Lake by Perrine Leblanc
Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
A Girl From Yamhill by Beverly Cleary
If You Left by Ashley Norton
The Heart You Carry Home by Jennifer Miller
And Again by Jessica Chiarella
Man by Kim Thuy
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George
A House For Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi
The Royal Nanny by Karen Harper

Monday Mailbox

This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Home Field by Hannah Gersen came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A small town high school football coach and his children are left reeling in the wake of their wife and mother's suicide and must piece their lives back together in the wake of terrible loss. This sounds wrenching but amazing.

The Infinite Air by Fiona Kidman came from Meryl Zegarek Publlic Relations, Inc..

The women who were aviation pioneers are endlessly fascinating so this novelization of the life of "the Garbo of the Skies" should be completely engaging reading.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler. The book is being released by Hogarth on June 21, 2016.

Amazon says this about the book: Pulitzer Prize winner and American master Anne Tyler brings us an inspired, witty and irresistible contemporary take on one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies

Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work – her pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner.

Dr. Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There’s only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, all would be lost.

When Dr. Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying – as usual – on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he’s really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to bring her around?

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Review: The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan

Have you ever seen old photographs with unidentified people in them, especially ones of probable family members? They make you wonder at the people in the picture and the life they led, don't they? When I was in high school, one of my English teachers handed out old time photographs she had found for pennies at an antiques store and we each had to write a story about the person in the picture we held. Obviously we never found out the real stories behind these photos, as they were unidentified, anonymous, and left to be glanced at by strangers in a bin at an antiques store. But what if one of those pictures had had a famous person in it, someone that would enable the viewer to trace the picture's story? That is the case in Mary Hogan's new novel, The Woman in the Photo, a dual narrative novel about the horrible tragedy of the Johnstown flood and a modern day adoption search.

In 1888 and 1889, Elizabeth Haberlin is going from Pittsburgh to the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club where her family owns a cottage on the man-made Lake Conemaugh. The Club is the playground of the Pittsburgh elite and Elizabeth is the daughter of a wealthy physician and his wife. She is a headstrong beauty who doesn't always follow the dictates of her privileged society although she can be just as superficial and selfish as any of her peers. She is most concerned with her impression on a visiting British family, and their son in particular.  She reflects, as always on the marvel that is Lake Conemaugh, the lake suspended in the sky, contained by an earthen dam fifteen miles above Johnstown, as she, her mother, and younger brother cross the top of the dam returning to their summer retreat once again.

In present day California, Lee Parker lives with her mother in a moldy pool house of a large and glittering home in the hills above LA. They must pretend not to live there as a condition of her mother's employment as the maid in the big house. Her father has run away and her brother disappeared after a Bernie Maddox-like character lost all of their money, including Lee's entire college fund. Lee was supposed to be at Columbia starting her freshman year, not working at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and struggling just to find gas money to get her to and from work. As if her world hadn't already crashed around her, a letter arrives telling her that health information about her birth mother has been received and she's entitled to that information after her 18th birthday. When she goes to find out this new genetic information, she sees a picture of a maternal ancestor in her file. The unnamed woman is standing beside Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross. And it is this picture and the connection that Lee feels with the woman in the photo that sends her on her quest to uncover information about her birth family.

Initially the two narratives alternate back and forth but as the story goes on, there are more historical set chapters than there are present day chapters. And the historical story, that of privilege and wealth inevitably causing a horrific, preventable tragedy out of stubborn blindness and hubris, is a stronger story than that of Lee feeling pulled to uncover her biological roots. Although history has already recorded the massive loss of life, the terror, and tragedy of the Johnstown flood, Hogan has managed to keep the tension of the coming cataclysmic disaster building as the story progresses. The mystery of Lee's connection to the woman in the photo does not quite maintain that same necessary sense of tension or anticipation, perhaps because the mystery is so clearly not a mystery to the reader. Or perhaps the difference in tension levels can be traced to the fact that Lee's story is told in third person while Elizabeth's is in first person, making the latter more immediate and personal. In addition to Lee's and Elizabeth's chapters, there is one chapter from Lee's adoptive mother's perspective and occasionally her thoughts and feelings find their way into the chapters focused on Lee but her perspective is not all that developed. There are also a few short bits on Clara Barton's life and what drove her to devote her life to a life of service to others. Although this information is interesting, it interrupted the general flow of the novel. Hogan has done a good job contrasting wealth and working class in both the past and the present day and of depicting the lead up to the flood and its terrible aftermath quite well though. The question of whether genetics is destiny or not weaves its way through both story lines and a letter from Elizabeth to her unborn child makes clear the author's position on this question although there are pieces of the story that argue the answer is actually more nuanced than a simple yes or no suggests. Lee does manage to identify and trace the woman in the old photo and she uncovers quite a story, something most of us faced with unidentified people in old black and white photos don't have a chance to do.  Readers of historical fiction and those interested in the Johnstown Flood will appreciate the story Lee uncovers for sure.

For more information about Mary Hogan, take a look at her web page or follow her on Twitter. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Monday, June 13, 2016

Review: Follow the River Home by Corran Harrington

Corran Harrington's lyrical fiction, Follow the River Home, is a novella and related short stories centered around Daniel Arroyo, a Vietnam veteran and hydrogeologist whose PTSD is worsening and who also continues to feel guilt over his baby sister's unexplained death when he was a child. The novella about Daniel and the short stories, all of which expand on characters or things that touch Daniel's life in large and small ways, show the interconnectedness of the characters just as the Rio Grande river flows through their neighborhood and their lives, anchoring them all to place.

The horrific things that Daniel experienced in Vietnam have haunted him since his return home. His flashbacks and increasing episodes affect his marriage and his relationship with his children. Added to his trauma is his long held guilt over his baby sister's death so many years ago. He holds himself responsible for the loss of her small life despite not knowing the whole story of her death. His double tragedies from the past continue to live in his present, sometimes more immediately than his actual present does. As he goes about living his life, holding on where he can and letting go where he must, many other people touch his life. It is the stories of these minor, heretofore unexamined characters that form the bulk of the short stories of the second half of this work. Each of the stories in the second half builds a life or backstory for someone mentioned in Daniel's story. Their stories may be far different but they all flow through each others' lives touching briefly, like small streams leaving their trace on each other as they come together to form a larger river of narrative, the narrative of the community around the Rio Grande.

The writing here is quite lyrical and there is a pervading sense of sadness in almost all of the tales. The horror of war and of grief and the way that these twin horrors never leave a person is beautifully rendered as is the dark pull of depression. The first short story told after the novella about Daniel is told from the perspective of several pieces of furniture in his house and that change of perspective, to inanimate but memory bearing objects is a bit disconcerting, especially for readers who expect a novel rather than a collection of stories. But as the reader gets farther into the originally disparate seeming stories, the more the connections to Daniel's story are made evident and the more the community enlarges to encompass many different stories and tragedies and sadnesses. The unconventional structure might throw some readers but the vivid imagery and the continued emotional cost of living is well drawn.

For more information about Corran Harrington, take a look at her web page, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Lisa from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Another crazy busy week this past week. One child graduated from eighth grade. The next day, another child graduated from high school. Four of the new high school graduates six final dance recitals were this week. We've been doing the rounds of parties for the kids we've known for so many years now. All these celebrations have been fun but they sure do take up a load of time. I did get a little bit of reading and reviewing done, even if it's not as much as I anticipated. This meme is hosted by Kathryn at Reading Date.

Books I completed this past week are:

The Girl From the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor
Man by Kim Thuy
Follow the River Home by Corran Harrington

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
You Have Never Been Here by Mary Rickert
West With the Night by Beryl Markham
A Well-Made Bed by Abby Frucht and Laurie Alberts
Riverine by Angela Palm
The Other Woman by Therese Bohman
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
The One-in-a-Million boy by Monica Wood
The Lake House by Kate Morton
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
I Will Find You by Joanna Connors
The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel
Eliza Waite by Ashley E. Sweeney
Shelter by Jung Yun
The Center of the World by Jacqueline Sheehan
The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris
A Manual For Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Last Time She Saw Him by Jane Haseldine
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
The Winter War by Philip Teir
I Hid My Voice by Parinoush Saniee
Bertrand Court by Michelle Brafman
This Side of Providence by Sally M. Harper
Country of Red Azaleas by Domnica Radulescu
A Different Kind of Daughter by Maria Toorpakai

Reviews posted this week:

The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes
The Girl From the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
My Confection by Lisa Kotin
Put a Ring on It by Beth Kendrick
One Perfect Summer by Paige Toon
The Things We Keep by Sally Hepworth
The Sisters of Versailles by Sally Christie The Private Papers of Eastern Jewel by Maureen Lindley
Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson
American Housewife by Helen Ellis
The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman
The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty
Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
Closer All the Time by Jim Nichols
The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett
Over the Plain Houses by Julia Franks
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Forsaken by Ross Howell Jr.
The Cosmopolitans by Sarah Schulman
The Spice Box Letters by Eve Makis
Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
A Very Special Year by Thomas Montasser
Specimen by Irina Kovalyova
One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Telling by Zoe Zolbrod
The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera
The Boy Who Speaks in Numbers by Mike Masilamani
Everyone Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
Every Exquisite Thing by Matthew Quick
What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas
After the Dam by Amy Hassinger
Our Spoons Came From Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
Umami by Laia Jufresa
The Education of a Poker Player by James McManus
Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse
Mrs. Engels by Gavin McCrea
The Iceberg by Marion Coutts
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Remarkable by Dinah Cox
Miss Jane by Brad Watson
The Inland Sea by Donald Ritchie
The Unseen World by Liz Moore
The Silver Spoon by Kansuke Naka
Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
The Gilded Life of Matilda Duplaine by Alex Brunkhorst
The Honeymoon by Dinitia Smith
The Last Weynfeldt by Martin Suter
The Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum
Bottomland by Michelle Hoover
This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance by Jonathan Evison
The Lake by Perrine Leblanc
Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
A Girl From Yamhill by Beverly Cleary
If You Left by Ashley Norton
The Heart You Carry Home by Jennifer Miller
And Again by Jessica Chiarella
Man by Kim Thuy
Follow the River Home by Corran Harrington

Monday Mailbox

There was an embarrassment of riches for me this week. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

Fall of Poppies by various came from William Morrow.

Short stories set in the aftermath of WWI, I am looking forward to reading these and discovering new must read authors.

The Hummingbird by Stephen P. Kiernan came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

This novel about a hospice nurse whose husband has returned from a third tour in Iraq and whose main patient is a WWII vet sounds like it tackles really tough, heartbreaking issues. This will probably break my heart but I'm looking forward to it anyway.

Run the World by Becky Wade came from William Morrow and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

How fascinating would it be to run with running communities around the world? In lieu of actually doing that (which sounds soooo cool), reading about it should be the next best thing.

Finding Fontainebleu by Thad Carhart came from Viking and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A memoir of life in Paris in the 50s and the author's return as an adult, I might not want to just read this one, I might want to live it!

The Runaway Wife by Elizabeth Birkelund came from Harper and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

About a man who is in the Alps to figure himself out when he meets three sisters looking for their mother, who has intentionally disappeared, this adventure and search story sounds like a great read.

The Valley by Helen Bryan came from Lake Union and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

The start to a trilogy about a young British woman who sails to the New World to build a life for herself, this looks wonderful.

Everything We Keep by Kerry Lonsdale came from Lake Union and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A book about a chef and secrets only exposed after her fiance's death, this kind of story is my catnip.

Lift by Daniel Kunitz came from Harper Wave and TLC Book Tours for a blog tour.

A nonfiction work focused on the gym culture today and our drive to become healthier, I'm hoping this one will help me stay focused on the exercise program I've been dedicating myself too lately.

If you want to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Thomas Christopher Greene. The book is being released by Thomas Dunne Books on June 14, 2016.

Amazon says this about the book: Two former lovers reconnect in this beautiful and haunting tale of great lost love from the critically acclaimed author of The Headmaster's Wife

Deeply affecting and compulsively readable, The Headmaster's Wife was a breakout book for Thomas Christopher Greene. Now, Greene returns with a beautifully written, emotional new novel perfect for his growing audience.

Twenty-one years after they were driven apart by circumstances beyond their control, two former lovers have a chance encounter on a Manhattan street. What follows is a tense, suspenseful exploration of the many facets of enduring love. Told from altering points of view through time, If I Forget You tells the story of Henry Gold, a poet whose rise from poverty embodies the American dream, and Margot Fuller, the daughter of a prominent, wealthy family, and their unlikely, star-crossed love affair, complete with the secrets they carry when they find each other for the second time.

Written in lyrical prose, If I Forget You is at once a great love story, a novel of marriage, manners, and family, a meditation on the nature of art, a moving elegy to what it means to love and to lose, and how the choices we make can change our lives forever.

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Review: The Girl From the Savoy by Hazel Gaynor

How many people chase their dreams? I mean really chase their dreams? We always tell our kids that if they don't shoot for the stars, there's no way they can reach them. Throwing yourself body and soul into the life you want to lead is the only way you'll ever achieve it. But sometimes chasing dreams means leaving things behind that you care about, turning away from one thing to pursue another, making choices that aren't easy but are right. For Dolly Lane, in Hazel Gaynor's touching new novel, The Girl From the Savoy, chasing dreams comes with a cost, one that she will always carry in her heart.

Dolly has always wanted to be a dancer and actress. But she also always expected to marry Teddy Cooper, the boy she's loved since she was 8 years old, and live out her life in the comfort of her small town. But when Teddy went off to war and came back suffering from severe shell shock, everything changed. The novel opens with Dolly rushing to start a new job as a maid at the Savoy hotel in London. She's dripping wet and splattered with mud on her drooping cotton stockings when she crashes into an attractive man just before she makes it to the hotel and although both are a little bit intrigued by each other, they go their own ways. But this is not the last time Dolly will cross paths with Peregrine Clements, a struggling composer who needs a muse to help him write music again. And through Perry, Dolly will also meet Loretta May, the darling of the West End and Perry's sister. With such friends, how could this little maid not realize her dream of making it on the stage?

Told in first person chapters from Dolly, Loretta, and Teddy's perspectives, the novel deals with both WWI and the years afterwards. Although the war is over in the present of the novel, all of the characters are still touched by it. Each of them paid a terrible price thanks to "the war to end all wars" and that terrible cost threads through even the most glamorous years of the war's aftermath. Dolly's humble origins and her ideally invisible service as a maid at the hotel give quite a contrast to the gay, partying, upper class life that the guests live. But Dolly doesn't intend to be a maid forever and she vows to lead the life she sees in the suites she cleans every day. The first half of the novel is rather drawn out, as Dolly tries so very hard to chase her dream and let go of her heartbreaking past, as the beautiful and celebrated Loretta triumphs professionally even as her private life crumbles beneath her own secret tragedies, and as Teddy struggles to swim back up from the horror that has him in its grip. The last third of the novel moves much faster with each of these three and Perry faced with the decisions that will drive the direction of their futures. The writing is very visual, making it easy to imagine both the alluring glitter of the theater world and the Bright Young Things, and the simple pleasures as well as the drudgeries of the working class. The stories of each of the characters, even those who appear to have it all, are poignant and layered and their sorrows are forever imprinted on them. This is a well-researched and tender historical novel that looks at the soul deep damage caused by war, personal cost, the pull of dreams, and what it takes to achieve them, especially amidst a world remade in the wake of a terrible war.

For more information about Hazel Gaynor, take a look at her web page, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Review: The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes

Trees are beautiful. Trees are awe inspiring. Trees are necessary to the continued health of our planet and of the human race. Each part of the country and the world has different trees that tell us different things about our local environment. Sometimes the presence of a tree that shouldn't grow in one particular habitat is invasive and negative and other times it is a wonderful gift. In Ned Hayes' newest novel, The Eagle Tree, a huge Ponderosa Pine that grows in the wrong place is just such a gift to one tree-obsessed 14 year old boy with autism and to the community of Olympia, Washington in which he lives.

Tree-obsessed might be too weak a word to explain March Wong. He lives and breathes trees. He climbs at least three trees a day, despite the scratches and dangerous falls that are part and parcel of his climbing. He memorizes everything about the trees around him from their common and Latin names to their habitats, the bugs that plague them, and the animals and birds that inhabit their branches. He is a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge about trees. He's also autistic. He flutters his hands in front of his face to simulate sunlight winking through leaves, he flaps, he moans, he doesn't like to look people in the face, he needs routine, and he struggles to interact appropriately with others. His intense, narrow focus on trees has resulted in his parents separating (his mother can't and won't move him to treeless Arizona where his father lives) and has also caused the state to want to evaluate whether he is safe in his mother's care since he keeps being injured by his climbing or by his reaction to not being able to climb. Neither of these consequences seem to have much impact on March though, as long as he is still moving towards his ultimate goal, climbing the Eagle Tree, a magnificent tree he spotted in the distance when climbing a neighbor's tree.

The novel is told in the first person from March's perspective. And his perspective is not one we are used to reading. In fact, it is sometimes painful or hard to read when he shuts down, disengaging from whatever is going on around him and retreating into his extreme fascination with trees. Because we are in March's head, we are told each and every fact that he knows about trees. This feels like it could in fact be an authentic look from the inside but it also overwhelms the action going on around March sometimes, minimizing the information that the reader is given about the selling to developers of the forest in which the Eagle Tree stands, and the vitally important upcoming custodial hearing with the state. Although it feels as if March's incessant digressions and intricate details about trees and climate change are integral to making him a believable autistic character, the abundance of information can be tiring for the reader. Some of the time the reader can intuit what is going on even though March misses the significance, doesn't understand, or doesn't care about it, but not always. March is a tough character to know as his mind is so often completely consumed by trees but occasionally there are glimpses of the people around him, even if March doesn't have insight into how he affects them. The ending was quick and easy, hewing as it had to do, to the outcome of the the real tree in Olympia that inspired this story. The novel is very much an interesting intersection between atypical thought processes and environmental issues all embodied by one boy and Hayes definitely knows how to write. Those who wonder what it might be like to live inside the mind and body of someone with autism, those who want a personal story about the effect that global warming is having on the nature all around us, and those who find an interest in both of those subjects together will certainly appreciate the book.

For more information about Ned Hayes, take a look at his web page or connect with him on Twitter. Check out the book's Good Reads page, follow the rest of the blog tour, or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

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