The Dry

 I think that I have become a big fan of Jane Harper, the author of The Dry!  This book is a great, easy to read, and follow mystery! And now I learn that it was Ms. Harper's debut novel (published in 2016). 

The death of Aaron Falk's best friend Luke, Luke's wife and son brought Aaron back to his small hometown in Australia, where years before Aaron and his father left in shame. Luke's parents called Aaron, who was a Federal agent (working in forensic accounting) to unofficially help with the case.  It appeared that Luke had killed his wife and son, then killed himself, leaving his infant daughter alive and unharmed. As Luke began helping with the case, old secrets began coming to light bringing up another unsolved death-the one that Aaron and his father had fled from years ago.

This novel is one of the best-written mysteries I have read.  I couldn't stop reading it! I have already ordered more of her books!

 

The Orphan Collector

The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman sure hits home with a novel that takes place during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Interestingly, the author had written it before the recent Covid 19 pandemic.

The story centers around a thirteen-year-old girl, Pia, who lived with her German mother and twin infant brothers.  Her father (also German) was off fighting for the United States in World War I.  The family lived in Philadelphia in a poor neighborhood.  When Pia's mother contracted the flu, Pia was left in charge of everything.  Soon her mother died, and Pia had to leave the apartment to find food and supplies for her and the babies. She left the sleeping infants in a small cubbyhole, hoping to return before they woke up. Sadly, Pia was struck ill while out and was unconscious in the hospital for several days. When she returned to the apartment another family had already moved in and knew nothing about Pia's brothers. Pia was placed in an orphanage and was determined to leave there and find her brothers, while also hoping that her father had come home from the war and was looking for his family. 

A neighbor of Pia's (who she had never met or seen) had recently lost her baby and happened to see Pia leaving her apartment without the babies.  She decided to go to Pia's apartment to check on the twins and found them crying.  Without thinking she took the twins and immediately left the neighborhood, moving away from where she would not be found. Eventually, this neighbor decided to take babies or children from orphanages, and sell them to grieving parents.  This served two purposes: one to provide money to her, and to help rid the country of "foreign children" and help them to be "American children".

It took Pia a long time to learn the truth about the neighbor and begin the search for justice for everyone involved.

I enjoyed this story, although I sometimes felt that it dragged a bit at the beginning, but I stuck with it and ended up liking it a lot! 

April Reads in 2021

 I got a lot of reading done in April-not sure why since I was traveling for almost half the month and I don't read much when traveling!  Anyway, here's what I read:

1) Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout: this was her second novel, published in 2007.  She's a favorite author of mine, so I was surprised that I hadn't read it.  It's a beautifully written, moving story about a young minister whose wife had died and he was left alone with his five-year-old daughter, in the small town that they had moved to earlier.  It's a good solid read that I liked very much.

2) The Searcher by Tanya French: I liked this story very much.  It is about a recently divorced man who retired from the Chicago Police Department and moved to Ireland for his retirement, hoping to find a nice quiet village to live in.  He found a place that was fairly remote and began to settle in fixing up his house. Soon he noticed a young kid watching him.  He learned that the young girl's older brother had disappeared and she had heard he was a cop and wanted his help.

3) Faith by Jennifer Haigh: this book takes place in Boston in 2002.  A number of Catholic priests were accused of sexual abuses, including Sheila's older brother Fr. Art. Sheila had long been estranged from her family but had remained close to her brother Art to help him in any way she could. As Sheila and Art became closer, old family secrets emerged.

4) American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow of History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser: this was a fascinating, heart-breaking non-fiction read  The author investigated the seizure of young infants of three million young mothers happening in New York in the 1960s. She centered on one young teen girl and the baby she lost to adoption but never forgot. The book was written well, easy to read, and very interesting.

5) Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan: I only read half of this book and then decided it was a DNF-did not finish- and set it aside as I began reading a different book.  I just couldn't find interest in it.

6) The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty: this is what I consider a nice beach read-interesting, entertaining, and easy to read (but somewhat unbelievable for me). A woman was a professional hypnotist who met and fell in love with a man. He soon told her that he had a stalker, which she found rather interesting.  And so the story goes. Easy to read book.

7) When I Was Yours by Lizzie Page: this story took place in 1939 when a seven-year-old girl was evacuated to a home 100 miles away from her home in London, as the country was expecting London to be a target for bombings. She was placed in a home where there were no other children with a woman and her distant husband. They all must learn to live together and deal with loss and disappointment. Good read.

8) The Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian: this was also a good book. A teenage girl left her home with her abusive father in the swamp with her new love and lived in Baton Rouge with him for a year until he decided he was moving on.  The young girl, now pregnant, had nowhere to go but back to her father in the swamp. One night her father became very threatening with the girl while in a shed. Suddenly, another girl showed up and saved her.  The girl who saved her was a daughter of a sharecropper for the other side of the swamp. The two girls formed an alliance and decided to take care of each other.  Both girls had dreams of leaving the swamp for good.  

9) Dusk, Night, Dawn by Anne Lamott: this is Ms. Lamott's latest book and is as good, if not better, than the others. I find her essays so simple and so moving at times.  Profound wisdom put simply. "Why am I here? To love this dumb old day. Oh, if only I could remember this"

And lastly:

10) The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende: another interesting story that took place in 1939. A young girl living in Europe was sent to live with her aunt and uncle in San Franciso as the war began. There she met the son of the gardener and they became fast friends.  Many years later as the young girl (now an old woman) is near the end of her life, she moved to a retirement home and there she met a care worker. Soon, the woman asked the care worker to be her personal assistant. The assistant and the woman's grandson began helping the woman tell her life story and they found letters sent from the gardener's son over the past seventy years.  The book is a quite beautiful story, nothing exciting, just a old, old love story!