An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin

 A story of the 60's as seen through the eyes of Robert and Doris Goodwin. The reader is a fly on the wall as they go through boxes of memorabilia gathered by Robert during his years attached to the Washington,DC powers of the 60's. He was more often than I ever knew "in the room where it happened".  Two brilliant minds explaining the era that defines my generation.  I should have been paying better attention. Also a reminder of how in a kinder, wiser time, two people could disagree and still love one another.  An amazing story.

There are Rivers in the Sky by

 I read this book while cruising down the Danube passing historical cities on an ancient waterway. It was a perfect match for that mood.  So many passages to stop and ponder.  Both poetic and political.

From the ruins of the library of King Ashurbanipal of Ancient Mesopotamia on the Tigris River a copy of The Epic of Gilgamesh is saved.

In 1853, Arthur Smyth lives in the slums along the River Thames. He will crack the cuneiform code to translate the poem.

In 2014, Narin, a young Yazidi girl is trying to avoid ISIS and return to her home in Lalish, Iraq to be baptized in its holy waters. 

In 2018, hydrologist Zaleekhah lives on a houseboat on the Thames and bring all their stories together. 

All the water that exists in the world now is all the water that has ever existed on Earth.  What does the water remember and does it connect us one to the other?

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

 I need to start by saying that rarely do I think the ending of a book is what I want it to be. This was perfect.  Five college kids - all Chinese-American - some more one than the other - try to steal five bronze statues from five different museums - very Ocean's Eleven. But there is so much more. What is it to be just one generation away as a hyphenated American? Who really owns the art appropriated in the colonial era. What would you do for the promise of $10 million. But really - the ending - genius!

Time of the Child by Niall Williams

 I loved This is Happiness and couldn't wait to get back to the village of Faha on the wild west coast of Ireland.  In 1962, electricity was still more accommodated than embraced and life still moved slowly. So did this story. I would described the first 100 pages or so as overwritten. Most of it beautiful Irish prose - but too much. Loved the family complication of Doctor Troy and his daughters. Loved revisiting the cultural mystery of the Irish Catholic church and its attitude toward a child abandoned. Glad I plowed through the "too many words" to the warm wise ending but I almost didn't. 

The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar

 Given my belief that many great things in the world were acomplished by women we never hear of, it will come as no surprise to learn that we may never have heard of Vincent Van Gogh if it weren't for the determination of his sister-in-law, Johanna van Gogh Bonger.  Johanna was married to the art dealer Theo, Vincent's brother. Both believed passionately in the genius of Vincent.  Theo is driven to illness and madness trying to protect and save his artistic brother. When Johanna loses them both she is determined to make the world embrace Vincent and his art. Of course there is a contemorary love story and a secret diary and a life changing discovery made by young Emsley Wilson whose grandmother is really the character I didn't get enough of.
Historical fiction - entertaining and enlightening although I think this story is really worthy of a much richer level of research and insight than Molnar provides.

 

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman

The blurb on the jacket makes this sound like a mystery but that is only because the story starts at the end and jumps around through three decades leaving blanks in the lives of the characters that are not fully colored in until the end.  We first meet Tooly as a young woman in 2011 doing her best to make no money at all in a small used bookstore in a sleepy village in Wales.  In 1988 she is ten, living with a quiet earnest man she calls Paul but is spirited away by a wild and free woman named Sarah and finally finds herself in the care of Humphrey, who appears to be a Russian intellect with great chess and ping-pong skills, and Venn, a mysterious man of the world.  In 1999, Tooly is sharing shabby digs with Humphrey but finds a useful pretend life among a nest of struggling students on the Columbia University campus.  Tooly, Humphrey and Sarah are all  waiting for Venn to re-enter their story. The unlikely events that lead to these fascinating characters sharing a life is gradually revealed as we, as readers, are invited to contemplate the nature of family, the purpose of wealth, and what choices we would make if all choices were possible.  Some of it is funny, much of the truth is hidden in pseudo-intellectual observations of the world,  at times nobody seems to be who they really are, and always there are books.  One of my favorite quotes:

"People kept their books, (Tooly) thought, not because they are likely to read them again but because these objects contained the past - the texture of being oneself at a particular place, at a particular time, each volume a piece of one's intellect, whether the work itself had been loved or despised or had introduced a snooze on page forty."

Shelterwood by Lisa Wingate

 This is based on the real disturbing history of the affect of the Dawes Act of 1887. Tribal lands were broken up and redistributed to every man, women and child on the tribal registry - even very young orphans. Disreputable scammers married 10 year old orphans to get their land once it proved to be rich with oil. In 1909, Nessa is one of those children. She and her sister were taken in by the Peele family and abused by the father. Young Olive Peele takes Nessa and runs into the woods where they meet other "elf children". Their lives become complicated and dangerous and folded into the hidded history of Oklahoma. Story number two, Valerie and her young son Charlie are hoping to start a new life in Oklahoma in 1990.  She is hired as a park ranger and faces push back from her male counterparts. When she meets a young Choctaw girl named Sydney who is concerned about her brother who is missing and her grandmother who has been sent to a home, the history and mystery combine. Leave it to historical fiction to teach me a real history I may never have known.