Somewhere Sisters by Erika Hayasaki

Subtitle: "A story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family".   In 1998, twin girls were born in Vietnam. Their mother knew she could not raise them herself. One, named Ha, was sent to live with an aunt in a village with little electricity but a close family. The other, Isabella, was adopted by a familly and very comfortably raised in the Chicago area. Years later, the adoptive mother learns that Isabella has a twin sister and goes to great lengths to reunite these two. She even offers Ha a chance at the same comfortable life her sister has always known. Is that a good offer? What makes a good life? How much of our identity is tied up in where we were born and how much in how we were raised? Who is family? All questions explored in this true story.

 

The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson

 Winston Churchill as you may never have seen him before.  In typical Larson fashion, he has managed to unearth details of of the man and how he was able, during the horrendous bombardment of the blitz, say what was needed to keep the faith to stand alone against Hitler.  As often as I read about that one fact, I still struggle to understand the courage of that small island. This story of Churchhill ends when the Americans finally enter the war and we will never know what might have happened had we not finally come to the fight. No matter, Larson has managed to reveal how this funny, pudgy, cigar smoking character was a true hero. Fascinating read.

susan,linda,nina, & cokie by Lisa Napoli

 As an NPR fanatic, I was excited to get a glimpse of these women working together, blazing trails. Unfortunately you had to tease those moments out of a "too much information" text.  The amount of research was impressive but there was no genuine feeling of the importance of their group effort - no story - just a journalistic report.  What was behind their nickname, the "Fallopian Jungle"? Would that have been acceptable now? They certainly supported each other but did they really like what seemed to be an assigned lane? I am sure journalism is a competitive business but I wanted to see that somehow this was different. Lots of interesting NPR history which seemed to interrupt their story. Glad I read it but wanted a different perspective. Wonder what the 3 women who are still alive thought of the book?