White Trash by Nancy Isenberg

One more title to add to my never ending effort to understand how in the world the 2016 election happened.  This one is subtitled "The 400-year Untold History of Class in America".  This is not the history I studied - ever.  Clearly the publishers of my history text books stuck to identifying the "winners" and playing to America the Beautiful.  To quote the author, "If this book accomplishes anything it will be to have exposed a number of myths about the American dream, to have disabused readers of the notion that upward mobility is a function of the founders' ingenious plan or the Jacksonian democracy was liberating, or that the Confederacy was about states' rights rather than preserving class and racial distinctions."  I those 400 years there were so many voices that spoke up for change, urging people to pay attention to an unpleasant reality instead of a comforting myth - voices that never made it into the history books.  England used its colonies to empty its poor - even America.  We used Eugenics, Manifest Destiny and Social Darwinism to keep the classes alive.  We have to admit to the problem before we can fix it.  Now what?

Chicago by Brian Doyle

What a wonderful homage to a city and to those first delightful years of independence after college!  I think I found something to smile about on every page.  Doyle created this fictional memoir from short humorous vignettes he had sent to his brother to get him through an illness.  He obviously loved his time in Chicago and even if you have never been there, you can tell why.  If I were ever to write about a place that I loved, I would want readers to feel about that place like I felt about Chicago.  A real feel good read.  Not that my book group agreed.  They had a problem with Edward the intelligent talking dog.  Go figure.

The Day the World Came to Town by Jim Defede

The subtitle for this book is "9/11 Gander, Newfoundland". When the skies over the United States were closed following the attack on 9/11, planes on their way from Europe were forced to land in Canada. The town of Gander, population about 10,000, was called upon to play host to almost 7,000 rerouted airline passengers. The crews of the planes took up all the available hotel space and everyone else, without the luggage that was required to remain in the plane, found themselves in schools, churches, and civic buildings. When it became obvious that this was not a 12 hour delay, the community of Gander and the surrounding small towns swung into action. Food and clothing was delivered. Homes were open for showers and a few private moments away from the crowded shelters. Businesses supplied toys and other necessities for free. The best example of human caring responded to one of the worst examples of human tragedy. It is a welcome reminder of our capacity to do right in a world that seems to so often behave badly.

Miller's Valley by Anna Quindlen

The Miller family has lived on the farm in Miller's Valley for two centuries.  The land often flooded when the waters of Miller's creek rose but it seems to have gotten worse lately.  Then the government sends a man to visit the families in the valley. He offers them new homes on higher land and the promise of a more modern life with great recreational opportunities connected to a new lake -a lake created by a new dam that will flood the valley and bury the old town. Eleven year old Mimi Miller cannot imagine a life anywhere but on her family farm and agrees with her father's plan to resist selling.  But change will come and not just with a dam and a lake.  Families don't stay the same.  People die.  Discovering the secrets that people keep can even change your view of the past. Home might not have anything to do with land or buildings.  The beginning of  Mimi's story is full of references to life in the 60's that will make the reader of a certain age nod with recognition but like most of Quindlen's books, this is about the many different ways we can be family.

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova

When young American Alexandra Boyd arrives in Bulgaria to teach, she is hoping the change of scenery will quiet some of her own demons.  Instead a confusion about hotels, an encounter with a very handsome man and his family and a mix-up in luggage lead to a very different adventure.  When she discovers that the bag left behind contains human ashes, she becomes determined to find the owners and return the bag.  Fortunately she finds an English speaking taxi driver she calls Bobby who is willing to take her to the one place she heard mentioned by the family.  But Bobby is not just a taxi driver and the family is not just any family and the people who seem determined to keep Alexandra and Bobby from delivering the mysterious bag and not ordinary bad guys.  And so the search begins across much of the area around the ancient cities of Sofia and Plovdiv.  I am not sure I could have correctly pointed to Bulgaria on a map before reading this book but Kostova's descriptions make me want to explore its ancient cities and beautiful countryside the same way that I wanted to discover all the hidden libraries and secret places in The Historian.  Sign me up for both tours.

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

Sloan lives in California but she must have a Eugene connection as evidenced by the number of familiar Eugene teachers she thanks in the acknowledgements.  However in this story, most teachers come up short in understanding brilliant twelve year old Willow.  Clearly she is "somewhere on the spectrum" and when personal tragedy threatens to throw her into the foster system, there is a lot that can go very wrong.  Instead she attaches herself to a host of quirky characters, uses her intelligence to rescue more than herself and, in a slightly unbelievable way, it all works out in the end.  Intended for a YA audience, it might be a peek into a way of living that many will never have to experience.  It might also be a validation of another reader's harsh reality.  Either way it is an ending that is hopeful.

My Last Continent by Midge Raymond

Raymond is the co-editor of a boutique publisher in Ashland, Oregon dedicated to publishing books with a "world view".  This book is a lot of things - some worldly  and some which get in the way of others.  First it is about the ecological problems created by the adventurers of the world wanting to get a visit to the continent of Antartica off their bucket list.  On the other hand, her descriptions of this stunning frozen desert and its charming penguin populations make even someone who thinks of 60º as cold consider a visit.  And then there is the love story.  This is a quick read which makes the jumping back and forth in time easier to manage and the Eugene references are fun to follow but the most thoughtful part is the realization that is it very hard to leave a small footprint in the wild and wonderful parts of the world. Darn it.

Origins by Dan Brown

The formula is the same and I am sure the movie script is already in the works but there is always just enough reality in his books to make them an interesting read.  This time he takes on the origin and the future of life on this planet with small references to the idea of monarchy, the perceived hypocrisy of the church and the role of women.  The best part though is the description of Barcelona.  In the beginning of the book he states that all the places referenced in the story are real.  I have never been to Barcelona. The places referenced were so strange that I had to look them up.  There are real. I sooooo much want to go to Barcelona.  Maybe I should wait for the Dan Brown/Origins tour 😊

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

At eighteen, Victoria finally ages out of the system - eighteen years of failed foster experiences, an almost adoption and a life changing mistake.  Through it all has been a primal connection with plants and flowers.  She has even received instruction in the Victorian understanding that each flower carries with it an emotion as well as the exact moment that a grape is ready to become wine.  Which is stronger - the hurt and anger that has become an essential part of her being or the possibility that she can learn a new more hopeful language?  Nothing heavy duty here.  Some of the characters are unbelievably good and the alternating back story/present structure makes start and stop reading tricky but the idea of the language of flowers is most interesting.

The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien

Cloonoila sits on a river in Ireland with the same name.  Somewhat isolated, idyllic on the surface, all its inhabitants known to one another.  Enter Dr. Vlad.  A charming though enigmatic gentleman from Montenegro, he is a welcome diversion from their hum drum life.  Although he appears to bring nothing with him, he plans to open a clinic - of sorts.  Soon he is drawn into the life of the town and its people.   Fidelma McBride grieves for the business she has lost and the child she fears she will never have with her much older husband.  Quickly she falls under Vlad's spell.  But he is not who he pretends to be.  He is based on a real character - one of the "butchers of Sarajevo".  Such is the essence of the story in part one of the book.  Part two finds Fidelma living among the immigrant community in London.  Part three centers around a trial in Den Haag.  The transition from one part to the next is jarring at first but eventually all hang together.  The title of the book is based on the fact that on an anniversary the siege of Sarajevo,  11,541 red chairs were set out on the streets of Sarajevo to commemorate the people that died including 643 small chairs representing the lives of children killed.  It is a powerfully written story disturbing on multiple levels.  Part of the universal tale of great evil meeting great compassion.  I guarantee you will look up the siege of Sarajevo and struggle to remember how something this big could have just passed in and out of your interest.  Then be grateful that books like this remind us that we need to pay better attention.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance

Someone suggested this book as an insight into "red" America.  Born into a hillbilly culture and raised in the Rust belt by a single, often drug dependent mom and multiple father figures, Vance's Mamaw and Papaw where his strange but consistent source of security.  But he got out.  Now a happily married Yale Law School graduate, he looks back at how he got out.    What things provided a way up and out?  What were the road blocks?  Given my introduction to the book, I expected some blame to be placed securely at the feet of the government.  Not so. Vance examines ACEs - adverse childhood experiences - as the greatest barrier.  Actual abuse and neglect are easy to identify as ACEs but it is the lack of family support, all the constant reminders that you are part of a loser culture that are just as devastating.  It was not knowing what fork to use or when a suit was required that got in the way of his climb out.  It is a reminder that we need to acknowledge our own history and focus on the changes required for a different future - the changes we must make for ourselves.  Not sure how "red" America sees his own personal rise. 

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

Jiles is known as a poet and a memoirist and draws on both talents to tell this story of an unlikely friendship in Texas in 1870. Captain Kidd earned his rank in the Civil War but at the age of 70 he earns his living reading the news to small towns around Texas.  When he is asked to return a ten year old girl who was captured by the Kiowa four years earlier, he isn't sure he is up to the long journey from Wichita Falls to San Antonio.  Although there are many adventures along the way, the bigger story is Kidd's understanding of Johanna and the many children like her.  Conventional wisdom then said that they were brutally treated by "savages" but Kidd sees something very different.  Johanna is a clever, free spirit and as they begin to form a bond, Kidd begins to think that returning her to her rigid aunt and uncle might not be what is best.  Jiles did a lot of research on both the times and the real truth of captive children which provides a real authenticity to this fictional story.  Even better, the idea of a time when the news would only be shared by a rich voice bringing news from places the listeners could only imagine seems like such an improvement over the information overload of today.

Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh

Ten year old Andrew Wiles, lover of mathematics, wandered into his village library in 1963 and picked up a book called The Last Problem.  It had to do with notes left in the margin of another book in the seventeenth century by French mathematician Pierre Fermat referencing the solution to a problem that dates back to the 6th century B.C. and a Greek mathematician named Pythagoras of Samos.  All of us learned the Pythagorean theorem in school - "In any given right triangle, the square upon the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides".  Pythagoras and other great minds wondered, "Is this true for any other values other than squared?" "Is there a possibility that somewhere  the value of the hypotenuse cubed is equal to the sum of.... or times four.... or times 24?"  Fermat left notes in the margin of a book saying he had solved this problem but the solution was too long to record in the book he held.  His solution was never found and Wiles was driven from the age of 10 (and I must add because of a book he found in a library - just saying) to discover a solution.  The story ends in 1993 with Wiles' announcement of his discovery.  From 1987 to 1993 Wiles spent all his time working alone on this one single problem.  Most of the mathematics shared would be incomprehensible to most of us but that is not the real story.  It is the quest.  It is math as philosophy, as logic, where a solution to a single problem might be 100 pages of complicated argument and little to do with numbers.  There may be no practical application for this problem and its solution but the reason for the search is the same as the reason we climb any mountain or explore any distant planet - because it is there and we want to know.  For people like Wiles, it is a need to know.

The American Spirit by David McCullough

This collection begins and ends with speeches at and about the Capitol.  In between are thirteen speeches McCullough, one of our most honored historians, delivered over the years. Many are at various college graduations.   What better occasion to call out young people to match the courage and integrity of significant individuals in history, often with connections to the site where he speaks.  But his words aren't just relevant to his audiences.  He words are just as inspiring to the rest of us - lessons in history - reminders of the unique way our country was born -  and, most of all,  what it takes to keep it special.  Pick and choose which of the speeches inspire you - then read the rest of his books.

The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood

I remembered reading this years before, but I thought it was long before it's 1985 publication date.  I remembered it as a feminist story (Did I have time for feminist thoughts with two small children in 1985?) - women reduced to the value of their uteruses,  But this time it read more as a political tale about power and its abuses.  I didn't see the Netflix series but would be interested to see where they made the emphasis. A different focus for dystopian literature.  It was interesting that the city? state? country? was named Gilead.  Atwood always gives you something to ponder and discuss.

The Spy by Paulo Coelho

Like most of Coelho's books, a story about something seems to be about something else instead. Mata Hari, the spy, tells her story through letters written to her lawyer from her prison cell awaiting execution.  She is above all else a self made woman but at what cost?  Was it the time and barriers to women that forced her to become the "exotic dancer" that captured the imagination of Europe.  Was her promiscuous life really a way of finding power - or love?  Despite her reputation as a spy, it doesn't appear that she shared anything of importance with either Germany or France but she was still found guilty - of espionage? of challenging the rules of society?  What does Coehlo want the reader to think about her, about war, about what is sacrificed for what we think we want?  Hmmm.  Maybe it is just about Mata Hari.  Nah...

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

This is certainly a period piece - NYC - 1937 - a little Great Gatsby, a little Edith Wharton.  Roommates Eve Ross and Katey Content, out on the town, meet Tinker Grey - charming, dashing and apparently very rich.  What are the rules of civility when best friends are attracted to the same man? A tragic accident tips the balance in Eve's favor.  But is she the "winner"?  When Katey discovers a copy of George Washington's "Rules of Civility" on the book shelves in Tinker's apartment, she imagines it a sign of his cultured upbringing.  But as relationships develop and shift and war intervenes, new truths emerge and the book takes on a new meaning.  This focus on a unique time and a specific class of people is elevated by insight and grand language.

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain

After her father's death, Riley MacPherson returns to North Carolina to settle the estate.  Her older brother Danny lives like a recluse in a trailer outside of the city.  Her older sister Lisa died decades earlier, a tragedy that had defined much of the life of the MacPherson family.  Lisa was a gifted musician whose kayak was found on the frozen river near Alexandria, Virginia where they lived.  She was only 17 and, although a body was never found, everyone assumed it was a suicide.  Danny carries a great deal of bitterness toward the way the family dealt with her death.  This along with his experiences in the Iraq War have left him estranged from his family and uninterested in helping Riley.
As Riley attempts to fulfill the directions of her fathers will, things don't seem to add up.  She finds documents and hears stories that don't quite match the family history she has always believed and is ultimately driven to find the truth.  This is a much lighter book than Necessary Lies but a good summer mystery read.

The Women In the Castle by Jessica Shattuck

In 1944, in a Bavarian castle, Marianne von Lingenfels makes a promise.  Her husband, good friend Connie, and other Resisters are all part of a plot to kill Hitler.  Recognizing the risk, the men charge organized, competent Marianne with keeping the wives and families safe if it should all go wrong.  The plot fails, the men are all hanged and the war goes on.  At the end of the war Marianne goes in search of the women left behind.  She finds two of them.   Benita, the beautiful and apolitical wife of Connie is living in the bombed out ruins of the city.  Marianne is also able to reunite her with her young son, living in a nearby orphanage.  Also seeking refuge in the castle is the enigmatic Ania and her three children. The castle and the surrounding community have suffered greatly in the war as did the women who have returned to the castle. Each carries with her secrets of the past - some they can leave behind - others they cannot.  Their stories continue through 1991 providing various perspectives of the people who lived through the war and then struggled to define who they were knowing what they had done to survive.  Readers who loved The Nightingale will love this as well.

Chasing Venus by Andrea Wulf

Subtitle: the race to measure the heavens
"Race" here is a relative term.  In 1716 Edmund Halley proposed a way to measure the solar system.  He figured out that the planet Venus would pass in front of the sun in 1761 and again in 1769.  By measuring the time and angle of the "transit of Venus" from multiple points on the planet, they could use mathematics to figure its distance from the sun and from that, the distance of all the other planets.  But this book is less about the math than it is the journeys. In 1761, Europe was at war, colonies were being won and lost, getting anywhere depended on ships and horse drawn carts and science had yet to become  SCIENCE.  It took years of gathering the support and finances necessary to make the needed astronomical observations.  They had to find ships that were kind of going in the right direction.  They fought weather and disease.  All the time knowing that to be accurate they had to do it again in 1769 for the math to work.  Hundreds of attempts were made in both years.  Only one man, Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche, was able to view both transits and he died while finishing his notes.  Another Frenchman, Guillaume Le Gentile de la Galaisiere was gone so long chasing Venus that he was declared dead and all his belongings were sold.  Hundreds whose names you might recognize like James Cook (who went to Tahiti and had to buy back all the equipment that the natives took) and Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon (of Mason-Dixon line fame) were only marginally successful.  In the end, it was a grand world effort and it worked.  You have to wonder what they would think as the world hops on trains, cars and planes to watch a solar eclipse just to oh and ah and say we were there.  This book is not as engaging as her "Invention of Nature" but it is a pretty amazing thing to wrap your head around.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Two half-sisters are born in the Gold Coast in the late 1700's.  Raised by different African peoples, neither is aware of the other.  One stays behind in Africa and becomes the "African wife" of a young British officer involved in the slave trade.  The other  is sold and sent to America on a slave ship.  And so begins a story told through generations.  Esi's generational story is one of slavery, hard won freedom, the sad consequences of segregation and Jim Crow,  Civil Rights,  and eventual success.  Effia's story is one of the development of Africa from tribal wars to colonialism and the eventual independence of the country of Ghana.  And then generations later - without the benefit of Ancestry.com - the worlds of the Fante and Asante come together again.  This is history from multiple perspectives and multiple decades with enough revelatory detail to span the missing years. There is an authenticity to both stories that may come from the fact that the author was born in Ghana and raised in America.

A Gentleman in Moscow

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life.  "House" in this case is the luxurious Metropol Hotel across the street from the Kremlin.  He must also leave the elegant suite he was occupying for a room in the attic of the hotel.  But the Metropol is a world unto itself and the charming Rostov is a well respected member of its society.  Historical changes outside the hotel doors as well as a whole host of interesting characters that come through the doors do much to expand Rostov's "prison".  But Rostov himself is a fascinating observer of the world.  There are so many occasions of wit and wisdom that I just wished I could be sitting at his table for dinner or sharing an evening drink at the elaborate bar or cruising the back stairways with him while we explored all the hotels secrets.  And then there is the great ending. It is a book that you don't expect to be about much but turns out to be worthy of multiple page markers.  One of my favorites this year.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

To say this is a non-traditional novel is to make a gross understatement.  It is true that in 1862, President Lincoln's young son Willie died of Typhoid fever.  It is true that "bardo" is a real term used in Tibet to indicate a place between physical death and a final resting place of the soul.  So this is a story of Willie's death and Lincoln's return to the cemetery to grieve - sort of.  The style of the book is one of continuous narrative - narrative from ghosts of people buried in the cemetery - lots of people although we get to know three of them better than the others.  The speaker for every part is identified and through their comments some of their stories are revealed line by line with the appearance of a movie script.  Interspersed between these ghostly narratives are lists of short selections from various actual historical sources providing what is often a conflicting historical context.  It's a jumble that eventually becomes a debate about the future of Willie's soul.  It is a jumble that raises questions about an accounting of our lives.  It is a jumble about what is important and what is not.  I think it is a book that would be even better in the audio version where each voice is distinctive - although it still might be a jumble.

The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood

 Ona Vitkus, age 104 and cranky, has come to look forward to the young Boy Scout who comes every Saturday to do things around the house.  She finds his obsession with entries in the Guiness Book of World Records intriguing - even more so when he seems determined to find a way to make sure Ona becomes a record holder.  Then one day, the boy's father, Quinn, shows up to do his chores.  Quinn, a hardly successful musician never quite warmed to his son - this odd boy who counts everything; who has a freakishly good memory; who has died.  Ona and Quinn eventually form a bond over the memory of "the boy".  Both look for a way to grieve the boy's death and a way to honor his life.  The choices they make about how to do either drive this sometimes humorous, often thoughtful story.  Something about each character puts them outside the "normal" box but they eventually confront the reality that no matter how odd we feel or how odd we appear, we all struggle to find connections.

The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones

Newly widowed Maggie McElroy travels to China for a writing assignment for Table magazine and to address a personal problem her husband may have left behind.  Sam Liang has left his home in Chicago to reconnect with his Chinese family.  He is already a well regarded chef but his grandfather was the last chef to the Emperor - the last Chinese chef.  The Maggie and Sam story is a complicated romance but the story of the Chinese cuisine is something else entirely.  One of the things I know for sure, I have never eaten real Chinese food - even in China.  The connection of food with history and family and mood and intention makes me long for a whole different relation with my dinner.  Apparently "the last Chinese chef" is a character of fiction but you could have fooled me.

Triangle:the fire that changed America by David von Drehle

On March 26, 1911, 146 people -  mostly young immigrant women - died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.  While the details of the fire are part of the book, it is more a commentary on the times.  The rise of unions, the socialist movement, Tammany Hall, the growth of the immigrant life - all a part of the story.  It starts with a prologue titled "Misery Lane" - the story of life on Hester Street.  The final chapter is "The Trial" which follows the attempt to assign fault to the owners of the factory, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris.  There are pictures and horrible details of the fire itself as well as a complete list of the victims but the details of the society of the city of New York at the beginning of the 20th century are at least as interesting as the tragedy that society almost overlooked..

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini

Some people live such interesting lives.  Elizabeth Keckley, slave, was the daughter of white master rape and the victim of the same.  Her sewing skills allow her to buy her freedom for herself and her son.  She eventually finds her way to D.C. where she sews for Mrs. Jefferson Davis and Mary Todd Lincoln and many others.  When the Civil war begins, Keckley develops an even closer relationship with Mrs. Lincoln and the President.  This relationship continues even after the assassination which is when the story becomes even more interesting.  Chiaverini sticks pretty closely to the strange story of what happens to Mary Todd Lincoln when she is left on her own although there are many version of this history to choose from. The fact that Keckley ends up living in the Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children after having founded the Contraband Relief Association to help former slaves relocating in D.C., written a highly controversial memoir of her life with the Lincoln's, and served on the faculty of Wilberforce College is a testament to the struggle between an individual's courage and the forces of the world around them.  This is an unusual lens to use to examine the war years, the affects of slavery, and the Lincolns.  The war years of the book are a bit of a slog but help give context to the rest of Elizabeth's compelling story. 

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Fix Keatng thinks it is strange that Bert Cousins shows up for his daughter Franny's christening party.  Stranger still that Bert kisses Franny's mother Beverly - a kiss that leads to a divorce and throws the four adults and their six children into a mash of events for the next five decades.  As they children travel back and forth across the country, they form alliances in the parenting vacuum created by the adults trying to sort out their new lives.  Franny becomes the primary narrator although the chapters often focus on different family members.  Two significant events drive the story.  One happens when the children are young and binds them forever in a secret regret.  The other is the result of a relationship between the adult Franny and a famous but struggling author.  He overcomes his writer's block by turning Franny's confidences into a new book.  With so many events and relationships made public, it is time for the families to confront their tangled history.  Stories about families and the key events that affect them are not unusual.  Patchett's ability to create characters we care about make this a worthy read.

The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf

So what do you know about Alexander von Humboldt?  Probably very little except for some geographic references I am guessing.  And so we start where Humboldt, the scientist, started in the last half of the 18th century - knowing little but wanting to know more.  At a time when science was more religion and philosophy than - well science, when scientist was not even a word, he gathered what few instruments there were and set out to understand the world.  As he traveled and measured and observed and recorded, he came to the conclusion that the world was not little bits of things but an interdependent whole.  While that may seem obvious now, in his day it was revolutionary.  Darwin carried Humbolt's books on his journey.  Pres. Jefferson welcomed him to the new United States as an expert on South America.  John Muir was guided by his philosophy. And those are just the names you might recognize.  He was one of the greatest thinkers of his time and influenced much of how we have come to understand the natural world.  I found going down the road of discovery with him fascinating.  The New York Times named this one of the ten best books of 2015.  Dense in parts and distinctively quotable in others, I agree. 

The Girl who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes

One grand home on Orcas Island; one beautifully embroidered silk sleeve hidden under a stair; two stories told a century apart fated to come together in the end.  The first story is Mei Lein's.  In 1886, the Chinese Exclusion Act forces Mei Lein and her family to board a freighter with the rest of the Chinese population of Seattle. They believe they are being taken back to China.  When she accidentally learns that they are all to be killed, her father pushes her overboard and tells her to swim to nearby Orcas Island.  The second story belongs to Inara Erickson, great great great granddaughter of shipping magnate Duncan Campbell (See where this is going?).  The family estate on Orcas Island has been left to her by a maiden aunt.  Her family expects her to sell but she is determined to renovate and make it a destination hotel.  When she finds the mysterious sleeve under a staircase, she begins to do research into how it came to be there.  And so the two stories stories eventually weave into one.
The author considers herself a writer of romance so there is a bit of that contrived chick lit feel.  On the other hand, I find that historical fiction is the impetus to research all that regrettable history left out of our history books.

And every morning the way home gets longer and longer by Frerick Backman

Grandpa's grasp on his memories grows dimmer and dimmer.  He fears the day he will not recognize the people he loves.  And so he talks to his grandson Noah - about his life, about Grandma, and often about Ted, his son and Noah's father.  This is more the last moments of memory than the first moments of the disappearing.  Grandpa is much more at ease with Noah than he ever seemed to be with Ted but it is clear that even the uncomfortable memories are ones of caring for one another.  A novella which is touching without being sappy.

Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig

Until he was eleven, Donal Cameron lived an idyllic life.  Free to roam much of the Double W ranch where the grandmother who raised him was the cook, he loved all aspects of ranch life.  But in 1951 Grandma had to spend some time in the hospital.  He was sent on "the dog" (aka Greyhound Bus) to stay with Grandma's sister Kate in Wisconsin.  That is adventure #1. Donal just cannot abide her tyrannical nature and soon there are so many conflicts that he is sent packing.  Traveling with him is Herman the German, Kate's husband (sort of), who has also had enough of Kate's nasty temper.  So it is back on "the dog" and off to adventures #2,3... - some planned - some not.   Doig draws inspiration from a bus trip he took as a child to write what would turn out to be his final tribute to his beloved Montana and the quirky characters that peopled his imagination as much as they did his past.  Folksy, hopeful, - typical Doig.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Pulitzer and National Book Award Winner - and probably many more.  It is both historical fiction about America at it's worst and a little bit of magical realism that allows Whitehead to play loose with time and metaphor.  Both disturbing and hopeful.  As a child, Cora lives in a antebellum cotton plantation in Georgia.  Abandoned by a mother who fled north, scorned by many of her fellow slaves and selected for frequent abuse by a sadistic "master", she escapes at the age of fifteen.  The underground railroad that carries her north is an actual system of tracks and engines and stations deep underground.  At each stop in her journey, she becomes a leading character in the long history of cruelty.  Lynchings, eugenics, slaughter of whole black communities, occasions of freedom that quickly turn dark - they are all there.  Cora draws strength from her anger at the people who have abandoned and abused her.  She knows she is meant to be free.  There are many thought provoking passages about the notion of prejudice and "manifest destiny" as well as insights into the slave experience. It is a hard history to acknowledge made even sadder by the fact that it sometimes feels more current than historical.

My Mrs. Brown by William Norwich

Sixty-six year old Emilia Brown knows that she will never be like the grand dame of Ashville,  R.I., Mrs. Groton.  When Mrs. Groton dies, Emilia is first to sign up to help catalog items for the estate sale.  When she comes across a simple, elegant, "little black dress", she becomes obsessed with the idea of owning one just like it - just one beautiful dress in her plain, ordinary, cotton dress life.  Not everyone thinks of Mrs. Brown as ordinary.  She has always been the neighbor and friend Alice could count on.  She was just the sense of comfort famous model Florida James needed when she took a break to study at the local college.  Even Rachel Ames, Mrs. Groton's personal assistant knows there is something special about her.  Mrs. Brown heads to NYC after saving the money for the dress but things do not go as planned.  This is a sweet, old-fashioned story with characters you wished lived next door.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

I did see the movie first - twice - and loved it.  And while this book corrects some of the details that were changed in the movie, the sense of the history these events represent is the same.  The journalistic style of the book makes it a little dense for an easy read.  It does not read like a Hollywood script.  However while watching the movie, I often asked myself, "Is this true?"  This book answers all those question.  So glad this story was told.

a piece of the world by Christina Baker Kline

Almost everyone is familiar with the painting Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth.  A young woman lying in the grass (Is she able to walk?) gazing at an old house in the distance (Is it hers?).  The painting was intended to create thoughts and questions in our minds but there was a real Christina.  A young woman who struggled with physical challenges and life choices.  Wyeth knew her.  She was the inspiration for the painting.  Kline has added fiction to fact to create what that experience might have meant to both of them.  This fictional memoir may not answer all the questions raised by this enigmatic painting but it may change the way you see the woman in it. 

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

Jiles is known as a poet and a memoirist and draws on both talents to tell this story of an unlikely friendship in Texas in 1870. Captain Kidd earned his rank in the Civil War but at the age of 70 he earns his living reading the news to small towns around Texas.  When he is asked to return a ten year old girl, Johanna, who was captured by the Kiowa four years earlier, he isn't sure he is up to the long journey from Wichita Falls to San Antonio.  Although there are many adventures along the way, the bigger story is Kidd's understanding of Johanna and the many children like her.  Conventional wisdom then said that captives like Johanna were brutally treated by "savages" but Kidd sees something very different.  Johanna is a clever, free spirit and as they begin to form a bond, Kidd begins to think that returning her to her rigid aunt and uncle might not be what is best.  Jiles did a lot of research on both the times and the real truth of captive children.  The story rings so true and the idea of a time when the news would only be shared by a rich voice bringing news from places the listeners could only imagine sounds so much better then the information overload of today.

The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

The subtitle of this book is "A Friendship that Changed our Minds.  The Friendship is between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky - two brilliant research psychologist who explored the fact that the human mind is prone to irrationality.  It turns out there are many ways that true logic fails us.  They called all the ways that assumptions we make lead us astray "heuristics".  These are things like the "halo affect" - we generalize one good quality of a person to include all aspects of that person - even qualities that aren't there.  Or "representativeness" where we see a cohesive story where there is really randomness.  Sometimes we can avoid this wrong mindedness and sometimes we can't.  This knowledge had application in government, sports, the military and eventually economics.  There were times when these two men thought as one but as Tversky's personality brought him greater recognition it caused a strain in their friendship.  In 1996, Tversky died of cancer so he was unable to share the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics which Kahneman received for the body of work they had done together.  This is a math and psychology nerds delight but anyone would benefit from seeing how often we are tricked and want to explore what we can do to undo our wrong thinking.  Good luck with that.

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

It's a mystery. Lo is sent on assignment to cover a new kind of luxury cruise ship for a travel magazine.  She has just had her apartment robbed.  She is a bit paranoid, and a lot dramatic.  She thinks the whole luxury ship thing might be just a bit off.  It gets even worse when she believes a woman that no one else on the ship seems to believe exists falls overboard.  It's a mystery

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

Lillian Boxfish is in her eighties.  Born in the beginning of the 20th century, she is ready to ring in the new year in 1985.  She is alone but she loves to walk and she loves the city.  Snug in her fur coat, she leaves her Murray Hill apartment for the short walk to her favorite NYC restaurant.  Offended to learn that the elderly owner is leaving the business, she picks up her coat and walks.  As she strolls through Midtown Manhattan and the East and West Villages, the reader is introduced to various characters that share "her city".  Each person and place she encounters reminds her of the various phases of her life - a marriage that ended - a son who now lives in Maine - but most of all the amazing career she had as a member of the advertising staff at Macy's.  It turns out that this story is based on a real person but it is as much a celebration of the city as it is a recognition of an independent, accomplished life.