"I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now I was free. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven." -Harriet Tubman I absolutely loved The Kitchen House and was thrilled when I heard Kathleen Grissom was writing a sequel. Though Glory Over Everything: Beyond the Kitchen House is a ...
Historical Fiction
Review of “The Midnight Watch: A Novel of the Titanic and Californian” by David Dyer
The Midnight Watch provides us with a beautifully written, compelling, and moving account of the failure of the Californian, a fellow White Star Line ship, to respond to the distress signals of the Titanic in those fateful early morning hours of April 15, 1912. Eight individual white rockets indicating distress were fired from the deck of Titanic. Second Officer Herbert Stone, of the Californian, ...
Review of “Jane Steele” by Lyndsay Faye
Jane Steele is a well-written, fun, and quirky read. I haven't read Jane Eyre and wondered if it would make a difference in my ability to follow the book. It didn't. Each chapter begins with a passage from Jane Eyre but this book is its own story and you won't be impeded in any way if you haven't read it. (Though I wonder at how I, calling myself a reader, could have made it this many years ...
Review of “Behave” by Andromeda Romano-Lax
Behave by Andromeda Romano-Lax is the story of Rosalie Rayner Watson and her marriage to psychologist John B. Watson, who came to be known as the Father of Behaviorism. This happens to be another of those books that's tough for me to review as there is a great disparity in what I feel about the author's abilities as a writer and story teller and my overall impression of the book. I think the ...
Review of “The Summer Before the War” by Helen Simonson
Helen Simonson has proven she's no one-trick pony. The author of the NYT bestselling debut, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, has left no doubt that she is here to stay. The Summer Before the War transports us to the beautiful seaside town of Rye, East Sussex. My mind's eye has conjured a bit of a Pleasantville feel to this innocent pre-war town where everything is just as it should be at the ...
Review of “Sisi: Empress on Her Own” by Allison Pataki
I really loved The Traitor's Wife by Allison Pataki and was super-excited at the opportunity to read and review Sisi: Empress on Her Own. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat for me. I'm not sure if, in part at least, it's because I didn't read The Accidental Empress. I found the comparison to Princess Diana to be quite a stretch since Sisi seemed to face consistent criticism for her lack of ...
Review of “Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe” by Dawn Tripp
Wow. Dawn Tripp can write! "Here I am again. Held down, held back, in a power struggle with some arrogant man, his ego and incompetence that has nothing to do with my art. It's like they're all together in some maddening conspiracy to make me good enough, but not good enough to topple them." Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe is a beautifully written account of Georgia O'Keefe's life. As a ...
Review of “Free Men” by Katy Simpson Smith
Though Free Men is the story of a slave, an orphan, and Creek Indian, it is not so much a story about being a slave, orphan, or Indian. At its essence, it's really a very poignant story of relationships, injustice, loyalty, and how we perceive ourselves. It's 1788 and the unlikely trio of Bob (escaped slave), Cat (a misunderstood, fragile, and traumatized white man), and Istillicha (a Creek ...
Review of “The Girl from the Train” by Irma Joubert
The Girl from the Train provides something a bit different than many of the WWII novels I've read in the recent past. In terms of geography, the settings are primarily Poland and South Africa. While both lands are richly described, I felt I learned a lot about the terrain and culture of South Africa during the period. I appreciated the details that made it very obvious that the author had ...
Review of “I’ll See You in Paris” by Michelle Gable
Thanks to St. Martin's Press via NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. Beginning at a their horse farm in Virginia, then alternating between 1970's and 1990's Paris and England, I'll See You in Paris is the story of a mother and daughter reconciling the past with their present. Though it is narrated in alternating time periods, and there are ...
