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.

For me, I can't wait to read: The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen. The book is being released by Bantam on March 22, 2011, better known as my 40th birthday.

Amazon says this about the book: The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town’s famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.

It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow. No easy task in a town shaped by years of tradition and the well-marked boundaries of the haves and have-nots.

But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, and certain to drag up dire consequences along with it.

For the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind. Long-kept secrets surrounding the troubling remains have also come to light, seemingly heralded by a spate of sudden strange occurrences throughout the town.

Now, thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the dangerous passions and tragic betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover truths of the long-dead that have transcended time and defied the grave to touch the hearts and souls of the living.

Resonant with insight into the deep and lasting power of friendship, love, and tradition, The Peach Keeper is a portrait of the unshakable bonds that—in good times and bad, from one generation to the next—endure forever.

Review: The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

I was probably predisposed to like this book a lot. Shakespeare allusions? Check. Sisters and their love/hate relationship? Check. Bookish characters? Check. It's almost as if Brown knew just how to make this book completely beloved by readers of my stripe. And she succeeds beautifully. Imaginative, raditating charm, clever, enchanting, literate. All these adjectives fit this delightful, well-written novel.

The Andreas sisters are all coming home, converging on their past and escaping their present. Rose, Bean, and Cordy grew up in a small Ohio college town with a Shakespearean scholar for a father who frequently communicated through the Bard's words, verses, and couplets. Each of the girls is having trouble and have chosen to make the news that their mother is fighting breast cancer the catalyst for coming home again, not expecting their siblings to also come home. Like the witches' portion in King Lear, the novel is narrated by the sisters as one omniscient entity, a method not often seen in literature. And this unique narration works so well because even when the story is focused on one sister or another and her secrets, no one besides sisters can know each other so intimately as to unmask and lay bare the truth so thoroughly without malice.

Rose has convinced herself that she has come home from Columbus where she is a well-respected math professor, to help and organize her parents, who clearly need to be parented themselves. What she isn't acknowledging is that she is terrified to leave the comforting idea of home and venture into the wider world with her fiance, who has taken a position over in England for the year. Bean, who couldn't wait to shake the dust of the provincial town from her feet has spent years in New York but she has never found what she so desperately seeks, devouring men and shopping beyond her means to the point that she resorts to embezzlement to fund her binges. Discovered and without any other recourse, she has come home to the place she once so longed to escape. Cordy also fled Barnwell, the pampered youngest who never had to face the consequences for any of her actions, coddled and humored. She has been drifting aimlessly since she left home, afraid to be successful. Only now she's discovered that she is pregnant and she turns to the people and place that have always offered her a soft and forgiving place to land: family and home.

With all three sisters home again, they quickly revert to their expected roles in the family while resenting the others for assuming theirs. It is clear that the sisters care for each other very deeply, even when they are angry or frustrated with each other. They each keep secrets and don't want to expose their mistakes or uncertainties to each other, wanting to maintain the persona with which they have long been labeled. To expose themselves so clearly would change the dynamic between them for sure. And yet they already know each others' weaknesses and faults as well as they know their own. These characters are so real and appealing that even when they are making the wrong choices and sniping at each other, it is easy to like them. All three of the sisters learn, grow and change throughout the course of the story. And they learn the value of family love and support as they become the people they were meant to be, both within and without the confines of the family.

I loved the bookishness of the sisters. Their reliance on Shakespeare to communicate with each other was a quirky and fun family trait. The sisters were very distinct characters and even the secondary characters were unique and differentiated, contributing much to the story. The love/hate relationship Rose, Bean, and Cordy had with each other was completely true to life. No one can frustrate you faster than a sister but no one will step up to bat for you faster either. Brown managed to tell the story with wit and humor. Having gone to school in a small Ohio college town and married someone raised in yet another one, I can say with confidence that Brown has captured the aura of the place beautifully, the ambivalence and/or reverence of the faculty kids towards the local school, and the quaintness of some liberal arts faculty (dare I say especially English faculty?). I highly recommend this novel of family and books and finally growing up

Thanks to the publisher for sening me a copy of the book for review.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Another good reviewing week for me. I'm liable to be completely silent next week while I'm on my birthday trip though so this is all in preparation for that. This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

Books I completed this week are:

The Invisible Line by Daniel Sharfstein
The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark
The Other Life by Ellen Meister

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
The Vagabond by Colette

Reviews posted this week:

Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
The Invisible Line by Daniel Sharfstein

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

The Wierd Sisters by Eleanor Brown
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark
The Other Life by Ellen Meister

Open Giveaways

Three copies of Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli

Monday Mailbox

Only a pair of books in the mailbox this time but what a lovely looking pair they are. This past week's mailbox arrivals:

The Art of Forgetting by Camille Noe Pagan came from Dutton thanks to Trish at TLC Book Tours.
Friends whose understood roles in each others' lives undergo a dramatic change after one suffers an accident forms the basis of this intriguing novel.

Letters From Home by Kristina McMorris came from the author.
I still write the occasional handwritten letter so this Cyreno de Bergerac of a tale about a woman writing letters to a soldier overseas has piqued my interest.

As always, if you'd like to see the marvelous goodies in other people's mailboxes, make sure to visit I'm Booking It as she is hosting this month's Mailbox Monday and have fun seeing how we are all doing our part to keep the USPS and delivery services viable.

Review: The Invisible Line by Daniel Sharfstein

Extensively researched and well-documented, this scholarly history examines a recognized but often over-looked phenomenon in American history and racial relations: crossing the color line. As the subtitle, Three American Families and the Secret Journey From Black to White, suggests, the book uses as case studies three different families who crossed the color line at three different times in history and at three different Southern places. The end result for each of the families was quite different socio-economically with one family gaining significantly in power, while one descended sharply, and a third continued along at about the same subsistence level in which they had been living.

Told in a chronological fashion, the stories of the Gibson's, Wall's, and Spencer's personal family histories are woven through with the history, politics, and law of the times to create a picture of just how each family's racial designation changed over time. The narration is a curious mix of detached historical fact and a deliberate and immediate omniscient narration style more commonly found in fiction. The bulk of the story centers around the decades immediately preceding and then subsequent to the Civil War when the concept of race was established more firmly in legal terms than at any time prior or since. And while the story is of the families as wholes, the focus is rather tighter on certain family members who left more historical record. Sharfstein chooses to keep his historical narration chronological which means that chapters on each family alternate throughout the book. This was sometimes slightly confusing and difficult to follow, especially in the beginning before the major figures became quite as distinct and recognizable as they eventually did. Once the central figure in each family was better established, it was easier to follow the switches but then they became a bit distracting as just when the reader settles into one family's narrative, the chapter break appeared to follow a different family's narrative.

Despite the structural difficulties, there is much interesting information contained here. I had always assumed from classes and previous mentions in books that the color line was fairly rigid and that "passing" was a difficult and fraught endeavor. While it was certainly fraught given the laws on the books about what percentage of blood, even the infamous "one drop," determined race, the line was never as uniformly rigid as many history books make it out to be. In fact, it turns out that the color line was actually rather porous. And that rather than being a furtive, quick event, crossing the line could, in some cases, be more of a gradual drift that not only did no one question but in which entire communities were complicit.

I found the book to be a rather dense read when it delved into racial legalities and political situations but strangely descriptively fictional feeling when discussing the lives of these very real people. There are several instances of repetition of the historical facts made all the more obvious by their similar wording within the different family's chapters. In spite of the structural flaws and dichotomous narrative technique, there was much good, very detailed information to be found here. This book could easily be required reading for a college history class focused on race in the South, being generally more readable than many traditional history books. It is certainly an interesting entry toward a more complete understanding of race and the US, shining a light on a fascinating phenomenon that was for so long only whispered of, if even that.

For more information about Daniel Sharfstein visit his webpage and his Vanderbilt faculty page.


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

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.

For me, I can't wait to read: Made For You and Me by Caitlin Shetterly. The book is being released by Voice on March 8, 2011.

Amazon says this about the book: Newlywed Caitlin Shetterly and her husband, Dan Davis, two hardworking freelancers, began their lives together in 2008 by pursuing a lifelong, shared dream of leaving Maine and going West. At first, California was the land of plenty. Quickly, though, the recession landed, and a surprise pregnancy that was also surprisingly rough made Caitlin too sick to work. By December, every job Dan had lined up had been canceled, and though he pounded the pavement, from shop to shop and from bar to bar, he could not find any work at all. By March 2009, every cent of the couple's savings had been spent.

So, a year after they'd set out with big plans, Caitlin and Dan packed up again, this time with a baby on board, to make their way home to move in with Caitlin's mother. As they drove, Caitlin blogged about their situation and created audio diaries for NPR's Weekend Edition--and received an astounding response. From all across the country, listeners offered help, opening their hearts and their homes. And when the young family arrived back in rural Maine and squeezed into Caitlin's mother's small saltbox house, Caitlin learned that the bonds of family run deeper than any tug to roam, and that, with love, she and Dan could hold their dreams in sight, wherever they were.

Made for You and Me captures the irrepressible spirit and quiet perseverance of one small family--and offers to share that strength with any reader willing to make the journey.

Review: The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

Chosen for my bookclub this past month, we seem to have a fondness for historical fiction. Quite honestly, I tend to prefer my historical fiction not be set in the antebellum South so I was definitely leary of reading this book. It's not so much that the topic doesn't interest me as much as it is that I know for an author to do the subject justice, the details need to be vivid and brutal. But I try for the most part to be a good little follower and read anything that is chosen for the group, even as I wince inwardly. And this book described many a situation that made me wince, shiver with revulsion, and want to hide my eyes and stop my ears.

Opening with the adult Lavinia scrambling towards the plantation house, hampered by her young daughter, but desperate to try and get to the house before the terrible event she's anticipating happens, the novel then goes back in time to Lavinia's very arrival at Tall Oaks and subsequent installation in the kitchen house. What makes Lavinia different in the kitchen house is that she's an Irish indentured servant rather than a slave. Her parents died on the boat journey so she is committed to the care of the Belle, the master's slave daughter. As Lavinia grows, since she is a servant, she is kept mainly in the company of the slaves, who come to form her family. But because she is white and so young, they don't enlighten her as to some of the terrible things they must endure simply because of their black skin. In addition to Lavinia's oftentimes naive narration, her slave foster mother, Belle, narrates as well. And in Belle's narration, there are no holds barred. There's murder, rape, and mutilation just for a start.

As Lavinia grows older, despite her love and respect for the Big House slaves, she is thrust more and more into the white world where her attachment to Mama Mae and Papa George is dangerous to them, a fact that Lavinia seems unable or unwilling to grasp. But Lavinia's desire to not forsake the family who has loved her for so long isn't the only dangerous thing in this tale. The most dangerous of all are the myriad of secrets that so many of the characters harbor and which change and destroy lives and lead to the eventual catastrophic climax alluded to in the prologue.

This novel was a very quick read, especially since the reader knows from the very beginning that there is a violent death coming. The quick glimpse into the future of the story served to keep the suspense and dramatic tension up the majority of the time. However, choosing to use two narrators unfortunately led on occasion to duplication of particular plot points which made certain sections a bit tedious to read as they added very little to the overall plot. The characters were, for the most part, fairly black or white (no pun intended). The good people were almost uniformly good and the bad people were almost entirely evil, making it easy to choose to root for the appropriate side, but which served to make the characters less real than they might have been. Despite the flaws and the dark and brutal nature of the tale itself, it was a generally addictive read. Not the South of Gone With the Wind, nor the South of modern eccentricity so common in contemporary-set novels, this is a hostile picture of the South but one that ends on an almost incongruously hopeful note. Fans of Southern set historical fiction will definitely enjoy this novel.