Every time I would look at Goodreads or Amazon or any other book reviewing website in 2014 for good mysteries, Natchez Burning by Greg Iles always came up. At one point I was on hold at the library for the book because there’s nothing I like more than a gothic southern mystery. At some point, however, I realized that Natchez Burning, while it proclaims to be a standalone book, is actually the fourth in a series. I’m somewhat of a stickler about reading books in order, (I like to watch characters develop) so I immediately determined I would start with the first in the series, The Quiet Game.

I’m so glad I did, as it gave me really good background on the main character – Penn Cage – and his personality.

Cage grew up in Natchez, Mississippi, and eventually became a lawyer, married, and practiced law in Houston, Texas. He returns to Natchez with his daughter following the death of his wife. Both he and his daughter are heartbroken and need the steadiness and love of his mother and father.

They are definitely welcomed with open arms by his parents, but it becomes abundantly clear almost immediately that things are not right in Paradise. His father, a highly-respected and well-loved doctor, is being blackmailed by a ruthless foe who has knowledge about a long-ago mistake the doctor made.

In addition to his parents’ problems, Cage is drawn into a long-ago murder case that has racial implications, and has the potential to bring down not only local and statewide officials, but it could impact the very head of the FBI.

The mystery is strongly compelling (I simply couldn’t put the book down), but I was also drawn into the lives of the characters themselves. I love southern fiction, and this was that at its very best. As many mysteries as I read, I have gotten quite good at figuring things out, but this one kept me guessing until the very end. Not necessarily whodunit, but how they were going to prove it. There were even times I doubted the good doctor. It seems lots of people know something, but they are all playing “the quiet game.”

I am so very glad that there are a few more in this series, and am eager to begin to work my way towards the critically-acclaimed Natchez Burning.

Buy The Quiet Game at Amazon here.

Buy The Quiet Game at Barnes and Noble here.

Buy The Quiet Game at Tattered Cover here.

Buy The Quiet Game at Changing Hands here.

I think we all tend to think that the fight for civil rights and women’s rights began in the 1960s. Or at best, the suffrage movement was the first time that women fought for justice. I suspect that there were very few brave enough to stand up for women’s right prior to the early 1920s, so it is really interesting to be introduced to equal rights advocates who lived in the early 1800s!

The Invention of Wings, by Sue Monk Kidd is the real-life story (told in novel form) of Sarah Grimke and her sister Angelina, who were loved and loathed alike around the 1830s. The Grimkes grew up in the south, daughters of wealthy slave owners in Charleston, South Carolina.

In Kidd’s novel, Sarah, the star of the show, is given the gift of a young slave of her very own for her 11^th birthday – something she clearly doesn’t want and is extraordinarily uncomfortable having. But her parents force her to accept the gift and refuse to allow her to free the young slave girl, known as Hetty to her white owners but as Handful to her mother and her fellow slaves.

Kidd’s novel is written in a back-and-forth style – one chapter is life as seen by Sarah Grimke, the next is life as seen by the fictional slave girl Hetty. Through their accounts, we become acquainted with the Grimke family as well as Hetty’s strong-willed mother, Charlotte. Charlotte is determined to become a free woman, and extracts a promise early on from Sarah to make sure Hetty is free one day.

Sarah does what she can, within the boundaries of the society in which she lives. For example, she secretly teaches Hetty to read despite the fact that it is against the law to do so, and Hetty is punished when Sarah’s parents become aware that Hetty can read.

Kidd takes her characters through decades of their lives. Both Hetty and Sarah are met with happiness and great sadness as they age. Despite the fact that Hetty is a fictional character, Kidd gives her such a distinct personality that you feel as though you experience her difficult life right along side of her.

The novel gives a wonderful picture of a horrible time in our nation’s history, and does it in a way that makes us happy to know the characters involved. Well, at least the main characters, as Sarah’s parents (particularly her mother) and siblings are despicable. Their treatment of the slaves made me cringe. Unfortunately, as the world changed around them, Sarah’s mother and, in particular, a sister , really never did see the evils of slavery.

I can’t recommend this novel more. It deserves all of the accolades it received this past year. It isn’t the easiest novel to read as the subject matter is disturbing, but Kidd’s writing and her development of this extraordinary pair of women makes it all worthwhile.

As an aside, and having nothing to do with Kidd’s writing, I was able to obtain a electronic version of the book that didn’t have Oprah’s comments. As I prepare this review, I don’t think that is possible any longer. I think if you choose to read this book electronically, you will have to put up with her comments whether you want to or not. I find that unbelievably annoying and the fact that she thinks we all want to read her comments extraordinarily arrogant. But I’m just a crab. I don’t know if others feel the same.

Buy The Invention of Wings from Amazon here.

Buy The Invention of Wings from Barnes and Noble here.

Buy The Invention of Wings from Tattered Cover here.

Buy The Invention of Wings from Changing Hands here.

A number of well-known and well-respected authors have died this past year. P.D. James, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Maya Angelou come immediately to mind. There are likely others that I am forgetting right now. But as good as those above-mentioned authors are, their deaths didn’t hit me as hard as the recent death of author Kent Haruf. I seriously felt as though a dear friend had died. Well, not really one dear friend, but many dear friends who live in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado, where most of Haruf’s books take place.

Haruf was, plain and simple, a magnificent writer. His use of dialogue and character development are as good as it gets. I can hardly bear to say goodbye to Mr. Haruf and to any future stories he may have written. Thankfully, he had just this summer completed one final novel about Holt, Colorado. His wife apparently ordered him to finish the book before he died, and he complied! The novel, Our Souls at Night, is scheduled to be released in June.

In memory of Mr. Haruf, I am reprinting a previous book review of what will always be one of my very favorite novels — Plainsong.

Kent Haruf, may you rest in peace, and thank you for giving us friends in Holt.

Plainsong

I will say right up front that this was a reread. And I will read Plainsong again and again and again. This beautiful book is among my top three favorite books, no question about it.

Plainsong, by Kent Haruf, much like the television program Seinfeld, is a book about nothing. But I eagerly read every word, and while I read, I kept wistfully looking at how much of the book was left, simply not wanting it to end.

Plainsong is about five or six people who live in a fictional small farming town in eastern Colorado. Though their lives intersect, (because how can they not in such a small community?) each has their own story to tell.

Bobby and Ike are brothers – young boys of 9 and 10 – who are forced to face much sadness during these few months in their young lives. Their mother suffers from deep depression and leaves them with their father to move to Denver. Guthrie is a high school teacher who faces his own moral dilemmas. Victoria is a 17-year-old girl whose mother and father have both deserted her, leaving her to face her pregnancy alone. She turns to Maggie Jones, a kind teacher, who realizes the importance of relationships. She takes her to live with the McPheron brothers.

The McPheron brothers are the stars of the show. Harold and Raymond McPheron are old bachelors who have lived together since birth, in the same house. They are hard-working ranchers who are set in their way, living their simple life. They are kind, however, the kindest, most endearing characters you will ever meet in a book. It is safe to say that the McPheron brothers are two of the most memorable characters I have ever come across in a book. I have never forgotten them, and I never will.

Haruf’s writing is beautiful. It’s why the book is worth reading, plain and simple. He writes in short, clear sentences. His descriptions are simple, not elegant in that phony way that some authors have. You can so clearly see and smell and taste what he describes.

You don’t have to be very far into the book to see what I mean. In the first few pages, Guthrie is waking his sons for school. They are having trouble waking up, but he finally succeeds and leaves them. A few minutes later, he walks again past their room.

Here’s what Haruf says:

When he returned to the hallway he could hear them talking in their room, their voices thin and clear, already discussing something, first one then the other, intermittent, the early morning matter-of-fact voices of little boys out of the presence of adults. He went downstairs.

When I read that paragraph, I immediately thought about the sounds of my little grandkids when they are downstairs playing together – just two of them. I can’t really hear what they’re saying, but I hear their little voices going back and forth, discussing their make-believe game, whatever it is, or discussing something important in their lives.  Haruf captured that experience in just a few words.

One of my favorite things about his writing is that it is so subtle. He doesn’t preach and he doesn’t horrify you with gore and violence, though violence does take place in this book. But he gets his point across through the eyes of the characters. An example: Ike and Bobby witness a terrible act by some teenagers. Later, they return to the scene, bringing along a friend to whom they had related the story. The boys are disturbed by their friend’s prurient and unsympathetic interest in what transpired and his desire to take something from the scene. These two young boys’ simple empathy to the girl who was the victim tells the reader so much.

Haruf’s dialogue is nothing short of magnificent. He uses a technique that I sometimes find distracting – he doesn’t use quotation marks to identify the dialogue. However, somehow it works in this book. The dialogue is so true, so realistic, that it doesn’t need to be set off in any way. In particular, the McPheron Brother’s dialogue is absolutely dead on right. When I would read their words, it would immediately set me in mind to some of my uncles, or older people I have met in my life, particularly small-town farmers or ranchers. You have to read it to know exactly what I mean. Haruf’s dialogue writing is unbelievably good.

This is a wonderful, wonderful book. Treat yourself to a read.

Buy Plainsong from Amazon here.

Buy Plainsong from Barnes and Noble here.

Buy Plainsong from Tattered Cover here.

Buy Plainsong from Changing Hands here.

Nothing makes me happier than when I come across someone’s recommended reading list. My daughter-in-law Lauren recently sent me this link to a blogger she follows, who, while her blog is mostly about sewing and crafts, apparently also likes to read. This is a list of her recommendations, and I have read a few of them and concur. In particular, I share her love of the book Tell the Wolves I’m Home, by Carol Rifka Brunt. It is a lovely story.

Here is a link to her recommendations.

Edge of Eternity is book three in a trilogy written by Ken Follett. Much like his Pillars of the Earth books, Follett presents history through fictitious characters and situations related to historical fact. The first book of this trilogy, Fall of Giants, introduced us to characters who lived during the early part of the 20^th Century, including World War I. The second book in the trilogy, Winter of the World, carried these same characters forward, added offspring, and introduced us to events during the post-WWI period and into and just after World War II.

I really enjoyed both of those books. I always like learning history, or at least historical background, through novels that I find entertaining. Though both were enormously long, I couldn’t put either of those books down.

Winter of the World was published in the fall of 2012, so I have been waiting eagerly for this third book for two years. I literally wrote the date of publication in my calendar so that I could download the book immediately. I knew Follett was going to present the years of the Cold War.

I dove in with relish.

Follett is such a good storyteller that I found, once again, I was immediately caught up in the story. However, little things started bothering me.

Did people really talk like that?

Do all men really look immediately at a woman’s breasts, no matter the situation in which they’re meeting or who the woman is?

Do women really giggle, while men laugh?

Are all “good guys” sexy and handsome or pretty and beautifully dressed, and are all “bad guys” really homely and beady-eyed and sporting crew cuts?

Could Mr. Follett possibly be using, well, stereotypes?

But I kept at it because I am really interested in that time in history.

But seriously, when everyone in the entire world is pretty darn sure that while they are sleeping, the missiles located in Cuba are going to be shot at the United States which will retaliate by sending nuclear bombs into the Soviet Union and the world is going to end before daylight, what they all decide to do is have sex? And not with their spouse? My friends, according to Mr. Follett, there was an unimaginable amount of boinging going on all around the world the days during, and following, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who knew?

I’m not exaggerating.

I PROMISE you I’m not a prude. But the amount of sex in this book became absolutely distracting to what was an attempt to be good storytelling. And the stereotypes that the author presented are embarrassing to his status as a well-read author.

About halfway through the book, I began counting the number of women who giggled. I came across seven instances of highly-positioned women in the Soviet Union and the United States who giggled (using Follett’s word), just in the second half of the book. I was greatly distressed. There wasn’t a single male giggler.

And I also PROMISE you that I am aware and comfortable with the fact that fiction writers don’t have to present facts. They can be biased. And unlike some critics, I don’t think Mr. Follett necessarily presented all liberal characters in a positive light and all conservative characters in a negative light. He certainly didn’t make the Kennedys out to be saints. I guess I must admit I can’t think of a single conservative character who was presented in any kind of positive light. But, still, that’s the author’s prerogative.

However, if you are claiming to write historical-based fiction and you don’t give President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher the slightest credit for helping to dismantle communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany, you simply can’t be taken seriously. If you are to believe the author, Mikhail Gorbachev pretty much single-handedly was responsible for the Berlin Wall being torn down. The pope and the Catholic hierarchy in Poland were concentrating on building up their own importance and Mr. Reagan was busy being a liar and a crook. Poor Mrs. Thatcher isn’t even mentioned.

I am sorry to say that I simply loathed this book, though I read all 1,100 plus pages. I owe the fact that I read the entire book to Follett, who, despite the faults I mentioned, tells a good yarn,  even if the characters were one-dimentional.

Buy Edge of Eternity from Amazon here.

Buy Edge of Eternity from Barnes and Noble here.

Buy Edge of Eternity from Tattered Cover here.

Buy Edge of Eternity from Changing Hands Bookstore here.