The Summer of Songbirds by Kristy Woodson Harvey

 

Title: The Summer of Songbirds

Author:  Kristy Woodson Harvey

Narrated by:  Jennifer Jill Araya, Reena Dutt, and Jackie Sanders

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 10 hours and 58 minutes 

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

Did you go to summer camp growing up?  I always wanted to, but it was too expensive.  I did go to a couple of church campouts, and they were a lot of fun.

Three women met as young girls at Camp Holly Springs and became lifetime friends.  Now as adults they are shocked to learn that the camp is going to close.  June Moore has run the camp for many years and is sad about its closing, but is happy that her niece Daphne and friends, Lanier and Mary Stuart are back with ideas on how to keep it open.  They are all going through interesting periods of their lives.  Mary Stuart has just gotten married.  Lanier is engaged but can’t help thinking of the one who got away.  Daphne is also thinking about the one who got away, Lanier’s brother.  Lanier doesn’t want Huff and Daphne to get back together, but will their hearts let them give up love a second time?

This story was told from three points of view:  Lanier, Daphne, and June.  I thought it was interesting that June was one of the narrators rather than the third person in the friend trio, Mary Stuart.  I also love how they always call her Mary Stuart with her first and last name.  The audiobook had three different narrators which provided each book narrator with their own unique voice, which I enjoyed.

I thought the story was entertaining and light.  I loved that it explored friendship and growing up.  I loved how the women had a great time as children at the camp and wonderful memories to fall back on.  I liked that they were there to support each other during hard times and that they could still learn as adults that they can make changes and move on from mistakes.  I loved the theme of found family.  The epilogue tied up everything perfectly. It was a perfect summer read.

Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II by Lena Andrews (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @marinerbooks for the review copy of Valiant Women by Lena Andrews.

Do you like to read non-fiction?  What type of non-fiction do you like to read?  I love learning about new pieces of history that I never knew about before.

“More than three hundred and fifty thousand American women served in uniform during World War II.  They served in every service, in every combat theatre, and in nearly two-thirds of the available military occupations at the time.”  Valiant Women is their story.  “Not only did women work behind thousands of desks doing clerical and administrative tasks, but they also worked, often for the first time, in an extraordinary diverse set of military occupations.  They served as pilots, aircraft trainers, photo interpreters, gunnery instructors, radiomen, metalsmiths, machinist’s mates, chemists, codebreakers, classification experts, lab technicians, translators, parachute riggers, ordinance experts, weather observers, control tower operators, mechanics, truck drives, radarmen, quartermasters, pigeon trainers, and much more.”

The primary source material for Valiant Women were interviews of women that worked in the variety roles telling their personal stories of their World War II experiences.  It also explains how the women units for each branch of the military were put together.  The military realized before the war began that they didn’t have enough white males in the right age range for the large undertaking this war would be.  Not only did they need men on the front lines to fight, but they needed men to be making the weapons and supplies for war and they needed these materials to be transported to the front.  They realized that women could be an important resource that could help fill in the gaps.  At first, they were in more traditional roles such as nurses and clerical staff, but they soon branched out into mechanics and so much more.  For these women, it was an exciting new opportunity to help their nation in a time of need.  Unfortunately, there were many hurdles including terrible misinformation that was spread about the reputation of the ladies.  African American women were also important members of the military as well, and they faced their own unique challenges.

An interesting epilogue also detailed what a difference these ladies made for the role of women in the military moving forward.  The sources section was very detailed and included the women who were interviewed.  I also enjoyed the pictures that were sprinkled throughout the text. 

I thought this book was fascinating and I read it very quickly for a non-fiction book.  I’ll admit that although I read historical fiction and like to watch movies set during World War II, I had no idea on the extent that women served in the military during World War II.  I knew about women aviators that were WASPs from visiting aviation museums and reading about aviation, but I had no idea about the rest of the branches of the military.  I loved learning this history and I wish it were in history classes more and also represented in movies.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who would love to learn more about history.

Sun Damage by Sabine Durrant (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @harperperennial for the review copy of Sun Damage by Sabine Durrant.

If you could step into a new life, where and what kind of life would you choose?  That is a hard question.  I would own a book and chocolate shop, I think.

Sun Damage is an intriguing thriller that I don’t want to tell too much of the plot to wreck it for someone else.  Ali and Sean are con artists that are making their way around the world.  After a plot goes wrong, one of them must assume the identity of someone else to hide in plain sight.  Will they be able to pull of this greatest of cons?

I really liked the setting in the south of France.  It made me want to vacation there as well.  It seemed that everyone was on a dreamy vacation and that is what made it easy for con people to get money from them.  I liked the fact that it was a psychological thriller and that the reader is always on pins and needles wondering if the main character will say or do something wrong to give themselves away.  Will they be discovered?  I liked the romance in it as well.  The novel had a great ending that I enjoyed.  I did guess one of the items in the end before it happened and felt very proud of myself.

I would recommend this to anyone looking for a psychological thriller to read on your vacation.

This novel just came out this week on August 1^st.

Counting Lost Stars by Kim Van Alkemade (Bibliolifestyle Book Tour)

 

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @williammorrowbooks for the review copy of Counting Lost Stars by Kim Van Alkemade.

What job in the past would you like to learn more about?  I enjoyed learning about punch card operators in Counting Lost Stars.  I didn’t realize that punch cards were used in WWII to categorize people.  It was an unfortunate use of a new technology. 

Rita Klein is a college student going into her senior year at Barnard in 1960.  She has just taken a summer class on computer programming that has gotten her excited about her future.  After she becomes pregnant, her parents send her to a Home for Unwed Mothers where she is forced to give away her baby.  Afterwards, she is unable to return to Barnard and takes a job with her programming skills at a firm located in the Empire State Building.  There she meets a tour guide named Jacob.  They grow close, but both of them harbor dark secrets.  Jacob is a Dutch Jew who survived the holocaust and is tormented by the fact that he could never find his family.  Will Rita be able to resolve her own troubles and to help Jacob?

Cornelia Vogel works as a punch card operator with her father at the Ministry of Information in 1941 in the Netherlands.  She slowly realizes that the census that they are working on is being used to find and categorize the Jewish citizens.  She gets to know her neighbor, Leah Blom, who teaches her English.  As she grows closer to Leah, she realizes that she loves her.  She also realizes she has to help her escape.  Will she be able to help Leah?

I really enjoyed this novel and couldn’t put it down at my kids’ soccer tournament this past weekend (don’t worry, I only read it between the games).  I liked both stories, but I kept wondering how they were related.  I liked how both stories came together perfectly at the end.  I like how the story showed that you could make choices that would make a difference to other people and your own lives.

I always love stories with a technical angle, and I loved learning about punch card operators and basic coding in the 1940’s and 1960’s.  It was considered a female job in those days.

I felt very bad for Rita.  It seems terrible to me that you were pressured into giving up your baby when you were an unwed mother.   I’m glad that has changed in the present day.

Cornelia and Leah are unconventional women who have a same-sex relationship in the 1940’s.  It would have not only been scandalous at the time, but also could have been deadly as homosexuals were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in the Nazi regime.  Alkemade does an excellent job of bringing the characters to life and making me care about them.  She also does an excellent job of making me care both about Rita and Jacob’s budding romance as well as Cornelia and Leah’s relationship.  I was vested in both of their stories.

The concentration camps and WWII experiences were harrowing and sad to read. Author Kim Van Alkemade does an excellent job of bringing the WWII experience to life and also creating great settings for both the 1940’s and 1960’s eras.  They were two distinct and different time periods.

Favorite Quote:  “Our secrets do us no good if we end up buried beneath the weight of them.”

I highly recommend this book to all historical fiction lovers.

Loving Miss Tilney by Heather Moll (Book Tour and GIVEAWAY)

 

What secondary character from a favorite novel would you like to see get their own story?  I was so excited to read this novel where Eleanor Tilney from Northanger Abbey finally gets her own story.

Loving Miss Tilney starts at the point where Catherine Morland has been thrown out of Northanger Abbey by General Tilney.  Eleanor also sees her beloved brother Henry leave to follow Catherine.  She decides that she can no longer stand to live with her father General Tilney.  He whisks her away to a house party and she decides she will find a rich husband among the gentleman attending the house party.  Complicating matters is that her second cousin, Philip Brampton is also attending the house party.  Eleanor loves Philip, but he is unacceptable to her father because he does not have money.  How can Eleanor find happiness for herself?

I enjoyed both Eleanor and Philip as characters. I loved how they enjoyed the same things and had great conversations.  Eleanor and Philip had such great chemistry too.  They had a very passionate kiss after an argument about the choices Eleanor had for the future.

It was hard to see Eleanor looking for another husband with Philip right there, but it was also understandable with the limited choices that women had at that time.  It made me really think again about the impossible situation that many women found themselves in during that time period where marriage was your only option, and you had no choice of your own. 

I liked that Philip was a mathematician.  I love it when math, science, or engineering show up in novels.

General Tilney is one of Austen’s best villains and he is really brought to life in this novel.  He would be a very difficult man to live with.  He doesn’t appear to care for his children except for how their success reflects onto him.

Heather Moll’s writing really brings the Regency world to life.  I have enjoyed her novels in the past.  I really liked that this book was a Northanger Abbey variation.  I have always wondered about what happened to poor Eleanor and this book gives the reader the details.  As much as I love Pride and Prejudice variations, I love to read variations for her other novels as well.

I would say the steam level is medium as there is one steamy scene in this novel.

Book Source: Review Copy from author Heather Moll.   Thank-you! I received a complimentary copy of this book as part of the book tour. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

About the Author

Heather Moll writes romantic variations ofJane Austen's classic novels. She is an avid reader of mysteriesand biographies with a masters in information science. Shefound Jane Austen later than she should have and made up forlost time by devouring her letters and unpublished works,joining JASNA, and spending too much time researching theRegency era. She is the author of An Appearance of Goodness, An Affectionate Heart, Nine Ladies, and Loving Miss Tilney.

She lives with her husband and son, and struggles to balance allthe important things, like whether to clean the house or sit down and write.

Social Links

website: heathermollauthor.com

FB: @HeatherMollAuthor

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Book Bub: bookbub.com/authors/heather-moll

Goodreads: goodreads.com/heathermoll

Twitter: @HMollAuthor

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About Loving Miss Tilney

SHE’S FORBIDDEN TO WED A NOBODY.

HE’S NOTHING IN SOCIETY’S EYES. WILL THEIRDESPERATE SCHEMES BACKFIRE BEFORE THEY FINDA WAY TO BE TOGETHER?

Northanger Abbey. Eleanor Tilney can’t bear her lonely life any longer. Distraught when her tyrannical father throws her friend out of the house because the girl lacks an inheritance, the long-suffering general’s daughter decides anything is better than a future all alone. So in a frantic bid for freedom, she puts aside her tender feelings for a man of no standing to pursue a wealthy husband.

Philip Brampton understands that fortune is against him. And he tries gallantly to bury his distress and support his lonely beloved, even after she starts pursuing an arrogant buffoon. But when he catches the fellow about to kiss her, their resulting harsh words cause a heartbreaking rift.

Stiffening her spine in a world that refuses to acknowledge her value, Eleanor attempts to navigate the impossible situation without quashing her desires. And though his shy nature abhors a scene, Philip braces himself for a confrontation with her cruel and abusive patriarch.

Do these childhood sweethearts have any hope of achieving lasting happiness?

Available in paperback, audiobook, and ebook.

Published on August 1, 2023 by ExcessivelyDiverted Press

194 pages

book link: https://mybook.to/LovingMissTilney

Loving Miss Tilney RAFFLECOPTER SWAG GIVEAWAY

The giveaway is open from 08/01/2023 12:00am EST through 08/12/202312:00am EST. Giveaway is open worldwide.

One winner will be chosen at random and notified via email on August 12, 2023. Winner has 24 hours to reply and claim their prize or another winner will be drawn.

Entrants must leave a comment on the blog, tweet about the blog post, or subscribe to Heather Moll's newsletter to enter. Entrants can leave a comment at every blog and tweet once a day.

aRafflecopter giveaway

Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger

 

Title: Apollo 13

Author:  Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger

Narrated by:  Fred Sanders

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 16 hours and 15 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

 

Do you have any favorite topics that you like to read about?

We have spent long weekends this year traveling around and touring colleges. Our oldest son is a senior and he wants to be an aerospace engineer.  We all enjoy history and decided on the college tour drives it would be perfect to listen to Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.

Apollo 13 is an excellent movie, but this book fills in all of the details that can’t possibly fit into a movie.  It gives the background of the Apollo program and of the astronauts that were aboard Apollo 13.  They were supposed to be the third mission of astronauts that walked on the moon, but instead an oxygen tank explosion ended their mission and left them scrambling for their lives.  Together with support from numerous NASA personnel below, they had to work together to come up with a solution that would ultimately bring them safely home.

Fred Sanders was a good narrator.  Apollo 13 was an intriguing non-fiction tale.  Whenever I turned it off to talk to my husband, my oldest son requested that it be turned back on again.  This was the story of Apollo 13 told in third person from Jim Lovell, Marilyn Lovell, and ground control’s point of view.  It was amazing how many things went wrong, yet they all kept calmly solving the problems and carrying on.  It is a very inspiring story. This is a great book for anyone interested in the space program.

COVER REVEAL - The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay

I have wonderful news to share today.  Author Katherine Reay has a great new historical fiction novel, The Berlin Letters:  A Cold War Novel,  ready to be published on March 5, 2024.  I'm happy to share all that I know about this new novel and reveal the beautiful cover. I have greatly enjoyed Katherine Reay's novels in the past, just recently A Shadow in Moscow.

More information about the novel follow below.

QUICK FACTS

·       Title: The Berlin Letters: A Cold War Novel

·       Author: Katherine Reay

·       Genre: Historical Fiction, Espionage Thrillers, Inspirational Fiction

·       Publisher: ‎Harper Muse (March 5, 2024)

·       Length: (384) pages

·       Format: Trade paperback, eBook, & audiobook 

·       ISBN: 978-1400243068

·       Cover Reveal Book Blast: July 21-27, 2023

 

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Near the end of the Cold War, a CIA code breaker discovers a symbol she recognizes from her childhood, which launches her across the world to the heart of Berlin just before the wall comes tumbling down.

November 1989—After finding a secret cache of letters with intelligence buried in the text, CIA cryptographer Luisa Voekler learns that not only is her father alive, but he is languishing in an East German Stasi jail. After piecing together the letters with a series of articles her grandfather saved, Luisa seeks out journalists Bran Bishop and Daniel Rudd. They send her to the CIA, to Andrew Cademan—her boss.

Luisa confronts Cademan and learns that nothing is a coincidence, but he will not help her free her father. So, she takes matters into her own hands, empties her bank account, and flies to West Berlin. As the adrenaline wears off and she recognizes she has no idea how to proceed, Luisa is both relieved and surprised when a friend shows up with contacts and a rudimentary plan to sneak her across the wall.

Alternating storylines between Luisa and her father, The Berlin Letters shows the tumultuous early days of the wall, bringing Berlin, the epicenter of the Cold War, to life while also sharing one family’s journey through secrets, lies, and division to love, freedom, and reconciliation

PURCHASE LINKS

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | BOOKSHOP | GOODREADS

AND THE BEAUTIFUL NEW COVER 

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS COVER?

AUTHOR MESSAGE

Dear Readers,

Thank you so much for your extraordinary support for my current novel, A Shadow in Moscow. I am still on tour right now sharing the story with libraries and bookstores, and I am beyond grateful each day as I see your reviews and support on social media. So, again, thank you!

I want you all to be the first to see the cover for my new novel, The Berlin Letters, which will be released March 5^th, 2024. After A Shadow in Moscow, it was the book I had to write. While Ingrid’s and Anya’s stories were sometimes difficult, they were also fascinating and took me to places I had not anticipated. The ideas of sacrifice, freedom, courage, love, hiddenness, and the shadows between perception and reality, rose within that novel and wouldn’t let me go. 

While still pondering a lot of those themes, I came across these photographs and many more. They are of the very early days — even the first day — of the Berlin Wall in 1961. I read stories of mothers passing their children over the barbed wire. I read of one East German soldier jumping over it himself. I began to envision what might happen… To the mother. To the father. To the child passed over the Wall on that August morning in 1961. 

Luisa Voekler, the story’s leading character, is that young girl and she doesn’t know of this past until the Wall’s final week in 1989. Then, like me, she can’t let it go. She starts a search. She plots a rescue mission. And in the process, she finds her father and she finds herself. 

Like A Shadow in Moscow, this is a split-time story. One POV will take you behind the Wall with Haris Voekler, Luisa’s father, while Luisa will tell you her own story and carry readers from Washington DC to Berlin. There are, of course, a whole host of other characters as well — some you’ll love, some you’ll question, and others you’ll simply worry about. You’ll worry because The Berlin Letters is a race, a chase, a spy novel, and a love story. And, I must say, there’s an old friend who comes to Luisa’s aid I developed a little crush on — you might find yourself sighing and swooning over Daniel too. 

Thank you so much for sharing the cover of this new story — I love it! You see Luisa front and center, in the exact outfit she wears during a scene in East Berlin, and you see her resting on a Trabant, just about the only car East Berliner’s could purchase at the time. I love the fact that the car is yellow too! And doesn’t that font just scream 1980s? 

And while the themes within this story focus upon many of the questions in our hearts, there is so much lightness and fun as well. And, once it’s out in the world, I hope you each will close that final page with a smile, a sigh, and a deep sense of hope. 

All the best to you!

Katherine 

 

AUTHOR BIO

Katherine Reay is a national bestselling and award-winning author of several novels and one work of nonfiction.

For her fiction, Katherine writes love letters to books, and her novels are saturated with what she calls the “world of books.” They are character driven stories that examine the past as a way to find one’s best way forward. In the words of The Bronte Plot’s Lucy Alling, Katherine writes of “that time when you don’t know where you’ll be, but you can’t stay as you are.”

 

WEBSITE | TWITTER | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | PINTEREST | GOODREADS

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

 

Title:  The Good Earth

Author:  Pearl S. Buck

Narrated by:  Anthony Heald

Publisher: Blackstone Audio

Length: Approximately 10 hours and 37 minutes

Source: Purchased from Amazon.com

 

What book has a character in it that you have a love / hate relationship with?

Tonight, for my Back to the Classics Book Club at the Kewaunee Public Library, we are going to discuss Pearl S. Buck.  We all picked a Pearl S. Buck novel to read and share.  I was going to read Sons, which is the second book in the House of Earth Trilogy.  Then I realized it had been twenty or so years since I read the first book in the Trilogy, The Good Earth, and I didn’t remember much from it.  Therefore, I read The Good Earth instead.  The Good Earth is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel for 1932 and was the best-selling novel for both 1931 and 1932 in the United States.  Buck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.  Buck grew up in China as the child of missionaries and wrote the novel while she lived in China using her firsthand observations of village life.  This novel brought a story of rural China to many people in the United States for the first time.

Wang Lung is a farmer in a rural village.  The novel starts the day of his marriage.  He is going to marry a woman named O-Lan who had been a slave at the House of Hwang.  Wang Lung and O-Lan have a good partnership with both working hard on the land.  Things are going well when a famine strikes.  They work through the hardship to become a wealthy family.

I liked the characters in this novel and the picture it captures of a rural village of China at an indetermined time (there are trains – late nineteenth or early twentieth century).  I like how it goes through about forty years of this family’s story.  I also enjoyed that the ending was a bit of a cliffhanger, so I do want to continue this trilogy by reading Sons. 

The love of the land was a constant theme through this story. I also liked how it showed that once the person that did all of the hard work has accumulated wealth, their descendants can find themselves destroying the family through their vices.  This was the end of the House of Hwang, and Wang Lung’s sons seem to be going down that same pathway.

The famine was brutal and devastating.  It was terrible to realize this happened several times during the farmers lifetime and they had no safety net to fall back on.

 The real hero of this story was O-Lan, and I felt very conflicted about Wang Lung.  He treats O-Lan terribly.  When O-Lan gives birth and then immediately goes out to the field to work. Wang Lung won’t even let her have a bit of time to rest, which did not endear him to me.  O-Lan is always selflessly working for her family only to be replaced by a concubine.  O-Lan has two small pearls that are her only special treasure.  Wang Lung takes them from her and makes them into earrings for his concubine.   O-Lan dies of cancer and Wang Lung is sad at the time but can’t help thinking about how unattractive he finds her.  I just wanted to smack Wang Lung.   He seemed to have problems with not being able to control himself around the ladies.  The other part I had a problem with was when his son told him that he liked a slave that they owned.  Then the 70-year Wang Lung decides that the 16-year-old slave is pretty attractive and takes her for his own concubine.  He then wonders why his son runs away.  I would run away too Wang Lung.    Thinking about it, Wang Lung is a good three-dimensional character with both good and bad traits.

Anthony Heald was a good narrator of this audiobook.  I enjoyed listening to it and found the story to be very engaging on my drives.

They Do It With Mirrors by Agatha Christie

 

Title:  They Do It With Mirrors

Author:  Agatha Christie

Narrated by:  Emilia Fox

Publisher: HarperAudio

Length: Approximately 6 hours and 35 minutes

Source: Checked out with Hoopla through the Kewaunee Public Library.  Thank-you!

Do you pick books to read based on the title? 

They Do It With Mirrors is the June pick for #ReadChristie2023 to meet a theme of “gunshot.”  I thought it was interesting on the website for the challenge it said that Agatha Christie was less confident of her knowledge of death by gunshot as compared to death by poison. Guns were still prominent in her works with 42 deaths caused by them throughout her works. 

I started They Do It With Mirrors in June but didn’t finish it until July.  This title grabbed me.  What exactly do they do with mirrors?  I was hoping that mirrors played prominently into the answer to the murder, but unfortunately it is just a phrase that Miss Marple says to explain the solution.  I was pleased that unlike a couple of other Miss Marple mysteries I have read, Miss Marple is in this entire novel and is the primary detective on the case.

Miss Marple is visited by an old school friend, Ruth.  Ruth is convinced that there is something wrong with her sister Carrie and hopes that Miss Marple can visit and investigate the problem.  Carrie was also Miss Marple’s friend in school.  Together with her husband, she has transformed her home, Stoneygate, into a rehabilitation center for delinquents.  There are also a number of family members visiting as well.  After a murder takes place, Miss Marple uses her skills to solve the mystery.  Was it one of the delinquent young men or a family member?

I love that Miss Marple is a nosey old lady and she is fine with that.  She strikes up conversations with everyone but is also not afraid to pull out her binoculars and pretend to look at birds so she can listen to other people’s conversations.  I was not quite sure how this one was going to end, but it was a satisfying conclusion.

Emilia Fox was a wonderful narrator of the audiobook, and I greatly enjoyed her narration.

Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom

 

Title: Crow Mary

Author:  Kathleen Grissom

Narrated by:  Carolina Hoyas

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 10 hours and 46 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you @simonandschuster #BookClubFavorites for the free books!

What book, movie, or show do you enjoy that features a person standing up for themselves and others?

Goes First is a young Indigenous woman in the Crow tribe in 1872.  She is sixteen and in love  with a young man destined to be the future chief.  She loves her life with her tribe, but often thinks about the violent death of her Grandma when she was a young girl.  Her Grandmother’s brother becomes a Grandfather to her.  Her life takes a change when her fiancée is killed.  Her father, the chief, tells her that a white trader, Farwell, would like her as a wife and it would help out their tribe.  Goes First marries Farwell and her name changes to Crow Mary.  She tries to straddle both the White and Native worlds as they fall slowly in love. 

Their idyllic world is shattered when they witness the Cypress Hills Massacre of 1873.  Crow Mary saves the lives of four Indigenous women who are being held captive.  Farwell reports the massacre and tries to get the people responsible to pay for the crime, but the public sentiment turns against him.  This event changes the course of their lives forever.  How will their family survive as the world they live in changes forever?

There is a great foreword at the beginning of the novel from a descendant of Crow Mary whom the author worked with to make sure that this story was culturally sensitive to her story and the story of the Crow people.  There is also a great author’s note at the end that describes how the author came across this story.  She visited a fort and an interpreter acted out the story of Crow Mary which immediately intrigued the author.  It is a fascinating story that I had never heard before.  I am so glad that Grissom found this true story of an intriguing woman and brought it forward for the world to learn about.

The story made me really think about alcohol and how its effects could really destroy lives.  This story also made me realize why prohibition may have been enacted.  It was disturbing how alcohol was poisoned and used to keep the Indigenous people under control and wasting all of their money on it rather than needed supplies.

It was sad how an entire way of life for the Crow people was annihilated over time.  The discussion of the boarding schools and how children were just kidnapped from their parents was heartbreaking.  The culture of the Crow and other tribes was different than the European way of living, but it had its own beauty, traditions, and culture. 

Carolina Hoyas was a great narrator for this novel.  I felt like she was the voice of Crow Mary and I enjoyed learning her story.  This was my first Kathleen Grissom novel, but I do have a copy of The Kitchen House that I need to read.