The Peach Keeper

The Peach Keeper
by Sarah Addison Allen

I believe this is the 4th book by author Sarah Addison Allen. She is one of my favorite "fluff" writers. Her books are are fun and easy to read "feel good" novels. I always enjoy the characters she creates and their lives in North Carolina. There is always someone or something in the story that is enchanted or has some sort of small magical powers, which is why I look forward to her books so much. In this story the magic is more a part of the past and alluded to instead of being a bigger part of the story. I did enjoy that she brought a character from her first book into the story in a small role. Of course it makes me want to go back and re-read her first novel. Since they are very quick reads, I may just do that.

Ms. Allen definitely has a formula she follows, but her reinvention of the story each time keeps me coming back for more.

Willa was raised in a small town and always felt less than equal to her classmates. Her family was one of the founding families of the town as lumber barons of the time. But when the forest was designated a national forest and logging was banned, her family lost their fortune. Although her grandmother was just a teen when this happened, Willa felt that her family was looked upon with pity or disdain. After leaving for college and then returning, she finds her own place in the town and settles down to a quiet life that she believes she was meant to live, keeping pretty much to herself.

The opposite end of the social spectrum is Paxton who has always been one of the rich and popular girls, who's family also went back several generations. She is president of the Ladies Society which her grandmother and Willa's grandmother founded in their late teens with four other local girls. Currently, Paxton is planning a 75th Anniversary Gala for the club to be held in the "Madam" the mansion originally owned and then abandoned for taxes due by Willa's family. Paxton's family has restored the mansion as a hotel/restaurant.

Along with Paxton and Willa, the story includes Paxton's twin brother Colin, who prefers to return to the town only on very short trips and Sebastian, another past classmate who recently returned to the town to replace the dentist who had retired.

Through the events of the story, the re-opening of the Madam, the planning of the gala, a mysterious skull being dug up and more, these characters examine who they were and who they thought they were in high school and who they have become since. The plot is totally predictable, but the story is fun and emotionally satisfying.

Five shots of five, but only if you are not looking for a story of great substance and import. This is for fun and fantasy only!

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Outlander
by Diana Gabaldon

Like Oh-So-Many books this is one I have had in my possession for a couple of years and just recently brought out to read, encouraged by many friends who are big fans of this series. Working at Barnes & Noble I had shelved this and the others in the series often and took customers to the shelf where they waited for adoption often. Based on the amount of traffic to that particular spot, I finally decided it was a series I needed to give a try. So I bought book one and promptly put it away.

If you've ever seen these books you would understand how daunting they appear. 600+ pages of one story takes a bit of contemplation before tackling. I had contemplated long enough.

This story starts just after WWII in Scotland with Claire and her husband, Frank. They are an English couple that have been separated during the war and are now on a second honeymoon in Scotland. One day, while exploring a stone henge type monument on her own, Claire steps through time back to 1743 Scotland and immediately finds herself in dangerous times among people who distrust her, not knowing where she came from or why she is there. She finally comes to realize that she is no longer in 1945, but 200 years in the past.

Carried off to Castle Leoch of the clan McKenzie she is constantly alert for any opportunity to find her way back to the stones she believes will transport her back to 1945. All the while she is trying to fit in and be accepted by this clan and be as unobtrusive as possible. Her career as a combat nurse in WWII gives her skills and knowledge valuable to her present situation and aids in her acceptance by the clan.

Jamie Fraser is the young warrior and wanted fugitive that rescued Claire from the English when she first arrived in 1743 and carried her off to Castle Leoch. A mutual respect and attraction develops as Claire cares for his recently wounded shoulder and nurses him back to health. Eventually, Jamie & Claire must marry for "political" reasons and to ensure her safety from the English by showing her allegiance to the Scots.

Gabaldon creates a story of historical fiction taking the reader into the Scottish Highlands among the lairds who rule the land and the tenants on those lands. We are invited to live in a hard and often brutal world where Jamie is on guard against being recognized and captured by the English Watch and Claire is seeking a way back to her world in 1945. The twists and turns of the story kept me on my toes with surprises and often painful events. Jamie and Claire are well developed and very real. They fight, argue, make up and care for each other in an honest way and we get to know them intimately as they share their own experiences with each other.

Although time travel is important to the story, it's not hugely prevalent in the story beyond the initial travel to the past. Where it does resurface leaves me with questions and causes me to consider what time travel would mean or involve, as it's not well defined in nature within the parameters of this book. I had to question what affect Claire might have on her 1945 life as a result of her actions in 1743. Or does Claire's presence in 1743 have no real impact because maybe she had already impacted the future that she lives in by already having traveled back in time? So many questions. I look forward to the next book as perhaps it may have some answers.

I give this book 5 shots!

Rainwater, by Sandra Brown

Rainwater
by Sandra Brown

Ella is a young single mother with a ten year old autistic boy. She runs a boarding house in depression era Texas, the time of the dust bowl. Her boarders are two elderly sisters and a traveling salesman. She has one room recently vacated.

The town doctor brings by a relative, a man named David Rainwater in the hopes that Ella will rent him the vacant room. Rainwater is terminally ill and won't live long. Although hesitant, Ella is persuaded to allow the man to move in immediately the following day.

The times are hard and made even more difficult by a government program enforced by a *deputy* who is the town bully. When Rainwater moves in he comes to know the hardships of the local people and in his quiet way supports their struggles against their circumstances.

And thus the stage is set.

The story of Rainwater's presence in his landlady's house and the town is tender and hopeful. The events that take place are at once horrible and unexpected. The ending is sad as we know it must be from the start, but it's a good and satisfying ending, nevertheless. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it's characters which were easy to love or hate. I don't think this book is Sandra Brown's "normal" style of writing, but I will definitely seek out another of her books in the future.

You can see a short interview with the author here. (Scroll down the page to the "Barnes & Noble Studio")

My rating is 5 of 5 shots.

One Thousand White Women, the Journals of May Dodd

One Thousand White Women, the Journals of May Dodd
by Jim Fergus

This book is historical fiction about the life of Little Wolf, a famous chief of the Cheyenne tribe. Little Wolf traveled to Washington DC to be presented with a peace medal by Ulysses S Grant. In this tale, he suggested to the president that the United States Government give one thousand white women as brides to the Cheyenne people to help assimilate the Cheyennes into the white man's culture. The children of these unions would be raised by the Cheyennes and they believed those children would be accepted in both white & Indian worlds.

Of course the president was aghast and the tribe quickly escorted out of town. But as word of the Chief's suggestion spread, a certain faction of women made it known they were willing to become the wives of these "savage" Indians and thus an agreement was made. Women were "recruited" from insane asylums, prisons, ghettos, etc. The first 100 women were selected and set on a train to the west. Among these women was May Dodd, who's journals are the basis of the book.

I googled Chief Little Wolf to try to determine whether the proposition made to President Grant was factual. I was not able to confirm that part of the story as true, but much of the story built around him, with the exception of the white women that joined his tribe is factual. I applaud Mr. Fergus in his research and the tale he spun around it.

At the onset of the book the story is brought to us by a present day descendant of May Dodd. Very quickly into the story I lost track of what was real and what was fiction and had to revisit some of what I had already read to determine if the author was talking or if his characters were talking. I found his voice in the story to be very believable, his story well written.

Not to be nit-picky, but once the story became the writings from the journals of May Dodd, the writing was a little less believable. A journal, by necessity, has to be looking back on events that just happened and at times it seemed very unlikely that she could be writing about the events that had happened as she did. Aside from that, I found her journals to be a fascinating account of her life as she looked forward to her new freedom from the asylum she'd been locked away in, toward her new life among the savages. She was an intelligent woman and although the prospect of living with the Indians, marrying into the tribe, became more and more frightening the closer she came to that reality, her assimilation into the tribe was recounted with a great appreciation for the people she came to know intimately.

I completely enjoyed this story. The ending was sad in many ways, but in researching Chief Little Wolf, it's true to his story as chief of the Cheyenne, and the story of the American Indians. I understand more than ever the tragedy of what early Americans did to the native people of this country.

I give this book five of five shots.

Juliet

"Juliet" by Anne Fortier

I'm going to start with the end of this book first. No, you don't need a spoiler alert, because the end I am referring to is the Author's Note. While it was apparent throughout the book that it was well researched as far as location, I was even more fascinated to learn, after reading the book, which characters were also loosely based on real people, and how much of the novel also referred to historical events or families. The story itself is indeed fiction, but knowing that the fiction grew on roots of facts delights me. And as such, I wished I had known some of that prior to reading the story.

The book starts in the present day with the death of Julie's beloved Aunt, who raised her and her twin sister from the age of three. The details of her childhood prior to being adopted by her Aunt are very vague, except for the death of her parents in a car accident in Italy when she was an infant. When Aunt Rose's will is read the twins are amazed to discover the estate is left to the less favored Janice while Julie's inheritance is nothing more than a key to an Italian security lock box and the "promise" of finding some unknown ancient treasure left to her by her long deceased mother. Leaving her estranged sister behind in the US with her spoils, Julie sets off for Italy to discover her "inheritance."

Once in Italy Julie begins to unravel the mystery of her past through a small box of documents her mother left in a safe-deposit box. As she learns of her ancestry leading back to the couple that Shakespeare later based his Romeo & Juliet love story on she finds herself in a world unfamiliar to her and not certain of who to trust and who not. The author takes the reader back to 1340 Siena telling the tragic story of Julie's ancestor, Giulietta, and her true love, Romeo, alternating chapters with the present day Julie's attempts to find the treasure her mother sought, until the two stories explosively collide.

I thought I was figuring out the characters throughout the story, alternately deciding which ones wore black hats and which wore white hats. Of course the hats changed a few times as I re-evaluated a good guy into a bad guy and vice versa. But even up to the very end I wasn't quite sure who Julie should trust or not.

When I started this book I would put it down and not pick it up for a few days or even a week at a time. I strongly suggest not reading it this way. I enjoyed the author's style and the way the story was written, but the reader doesn't do the book justice by not reading consistently through the story.

This book has a little for most readers, mystery, crime, adventure & romance. I thought of several books or stories as I read... The Da Vinci Code, Indiana Jones, and of course, Romeo & Juliet. My personal rating is four of five shots.

Still Alice

Still Alice
by Lisa Genova

This is a fictional story is about a woman who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. It's a topic that has interested me as the daughter and caregiver of a woman who likely had Alzheimer's. But lucky for my mother, she lived a long life and accomplished many things before she was disabled by the disease late in life.

The story is told through the eyes of Alice. She is just 50, a highly respected professor and scientist at Harvard. She begins to be aware of instances where she can't find the words she wants, misplaces things or becomes temporarily disoriented. At first she suspects menopause and makes an appointment with her doctor to confirm her suspicions. Her doctor thinks it is more than just menopause and sends her to a neurologist who suspects Alzheimer's. (The author admits that a quick diagnosis is not usual for early onset Alzheimer's disease. For the sake of the story she cut through the potential months and years of looking for the diagnosis.)

Alice's husband is a biologist and she is a psychologist with emphasis on linguistics. Through their Harvard connections they research treatments, medications and clinical trials. Unfortunately, there is not much hope for Alzheimer's victims. Alice develops routines and processes to help herself navigate her way through her days. She contemplates suicide and creates a plan to carry it out when the disease has stolen too much from her. Written in the first person, we feel not only her frustration as she stumbles through obstacles that never were before, but also horror as we realize how much more the disease has affected her than she does.

The story hit emotionally close to home for me. I have issues with my own memory, I have as far back as I can remember, so I don't know how concerned I really need be. But to know that I am not too young for Alzheimer's is a terrifying thought. Having cared for my mother as her life escaped her memory of it really allowed me to feel what Alice was experiencing as I read it. The story moved me to tears more than once. Alice eventually forgets that she was a world renown psychologist and very bright. Similarly, my mother forgot that she earned a veterinary degree in the days when most women who attended college became either teachers or home ec majors.

Alzheimer's not only steals your precious memories, but interferes with immediate memory, too. Listening to people speak is unbearably hard when you can't decipher the meanings of the words quickly enough to follow what is being said. Reading a book is impossible as well as watching TV or a movie. The Alzheimer's victim becomes a silent observer of people and things she feels no relation or connection to. Never mind that it's her own family.

Alice struggles with her relationship with her husband and although I felt he still loved her, he couldn't bear losing her while she was still there. Her children responded differently and although in different processes, all rallied around her, and at least one mother/daughter relationship was better than it had been prior to the onset of the disease. I found this very plausible having experienced a similar thing with my own mother.

I loved this book and felt it gave me a lot of insight to what my mother experienced the last few years of her life and also made me even happier that she came to live with us and I could be with her. I think Lisa Genova did a wonderful and sensitive job of bringing a face and personality to a disease that cripples so many elderly people and even more horrifically, many younger people as well. I wish I had read this book while my mother was still living.

Gunn's Golden Rules

Gunn's Golden Rules: Life's Little Lessons for Making it Work
by Tim Gunn

Sadly, as much as I adore Tim Gunn, I am not finding this book very inspirational.

He writes like the editor never gave it back and said "let's re-work this part." It rambles in different directions shamelessly. And I really believe that although he's saying one thing in the book, the anecdotes he's sharing actually say something else. I still adore his TV personality but I am feeling like he is a person that was stabbed with hundreds of little pins & needles throughout his life and has yet to forgive or forget a single one of them. He's all about "taking the high road." To me that means really letting go and moving on. I'm just finding that disappointing.

I felt the writing did get better the further I read and either he seemed to stay on track a bit better or I grew accustomed to his style of writing and developed a sense of how to follow him.

The book is of course, by title, Tim Gunn's rules for life. I think it's important to keep that in perspective because his rules fit him. It's not a one size fits all book of rules to live by. That said, I think he imparts many good lessons in the value of manners and etiquette. Actually, upon reviewing the titles of all his chapters, I can't disagree with any of his rules. I suppose my disagreement comes in their interpretations. One anecdote that sticks clearly in my mind involves showing up at a party with an uninvited/unexpected guest in tow. Yes, this would absolutely be verboten, particularly for a sit down dinner party. But in Tim's anecdote he was a guest, not the host, and he chose to jump up and relinquish his place at the party and go home!!

This particular story really disturbed me. I thought about the host, how he/she must feel to have Tim insist on leaving as the result of another guest's poor decision. I think it would put a negative feeling on the entire evening that could have been avoided if handled differently. I also would have wondered why he even chose to accept the invitation if he were so willing to give it up. I know I am putting a lot of my own feelings into the anecdote, but I think the polite thing to do would have been to allow the host and the guest/non-guest involved to "make it work."

There were other examples where I felt Tim was saying one thing and writing about acting another way. Perhaps I just don't find a gossipy "tell-all" book the right venue for "Ms. Manners."

I am sure I will continue to love Tim on Project Runway and other venues he surfaces in, but I may have a tiny bit less respect for him. Or not. After all, as with all of us, he's only human.