Ginny Moon

I have ended up waiting a couple of years to read this book.  I kept waiting to find it in the used book store, but never did, so I finally just went ahead and bought it.  Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig is a really good, touching, funny, thought-provoking book.


Ginny Moon is a novel about a thirteen year old girl who has autism and had been in the foster care system since she was nine years old.  Ginny was now with her Forever Parents (adoptive parents) and was settling in as well as could be expected.  She had friends at her school and was active in extracurricular events. However, when her Forever Mom became pregnant, it evoked all kinds of feelings and memories for Ginny, especially about how she had left her Baby Doll at her birth mother's home and didn't know if anyone was caring for it.

Her Forever Parents had rules for Ginny and one was that she was not allowed to use the internet because they were afraid she would try to find and communicate with her birth mother. So Ginny asked her friend at school to look up Gloria, her birth mother.  They found her and began chatting with her.  Ginny wanted to meet up with Gloria to get her Baby Doll back.  And that was the start of Ginny's adventures.

Throughout the book, the reader slowly learns about Ginny's horrendous history, but also about her redemptive future.  It's a wonderful story about the power of  love and hope.

It was interesting to read the author's notes.  He and his wife adopted a daughter with autism, and that's when the voice of Ginny began for him.

Where the Crawdads Sing

I had been anxiously awaiting for Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens to come out in paperback.  However, after a glowing recommendation from a book club member whose opinions of books almost always matches mine, I had to go ahead and buy the hardback.  (It was funny when I was at Barnes and Noble buying it, three clerks commented to me on what a wonderful book it was!) I'm very glad that I didn't wait any longer.  It is a wonderful, beautifully written book.  It is the author's debut novel, which is astounding.  It is a book of wonder, mystery, survival and love.


The book begins with the prologue from 1969, telling of a popular young man found dead in the marsh. From there the book goes back and forth in time telling the story of the "Marsh Girl", Kya Clark,

The first chapter of Where the Crawdads Sing begins in 1952 with the story of a young girl living in a shack in the marsh on the North Carolina coast.  In 1952, when Kya was six years old, she watched her mother walk out of their shack. Soon after her mother left, Kya's four older siblings also left, tired of their father's alcoholic rages and abuse.  Her father would leave her for days, sometimes weeks, and Kya learned to survive on her own.

She learned to avoid the truant officers and the social service people and eventually, they quit trying to engage her.  After three or four years, her father drifted away and never returned. This left twelve year old Kya living alone in the shack.  Kya had always been interested in the life around the marsh...the birds, their feathers, insects, and shells.  She collected and studied all of it.  She felt close to the sea gulls that she saw every day.  She sold fresh mussels and fresh fish to the man who owned the Gas and Bait on one of the wharfs, in order to pay for groceries and gas for the boat.

As Kya became a teenager, she became friends with one of her brother's friends.  Tate is interested in all the marsh wildlife also, and as they become friends, Tate taught Kya how to read and they became quite close.  But when Tate went off to college, he never communicated or saw Kya again, leaving her abandoned once more. Meanwhile, Kya had noticed kids about her age, going to some of the remote beaches partying, etc.  She eventually met Chase, one of those kids.  She and Chase became involved with each other for awhile until Kya saw the announcement of Chase's engagement in the newspaper one day, and she would have nothing to do with him after that.  Abandoned once again, Kya turned into herself and began her new life alone.

Did she kill Chase?  You'll have to read the book.

The Girls

I don't remember where I heard of this book, either on a podcast or I read about it, but I found The Girls by Lori Lansens to be wonderful!  It's an older book, written in 2005.


This novel is told by two girls, Ruby and Rose, who were twins co-joined at the side of their heads.  The book is primarily narrated by Rose, who was writing about their lives and hoped that the book would be published.  Ruby was a rather un-enthused participant in the book.

The two girls were very different from each other, both physically and intellectually, but their devotion and love for each other is touching.  Because they were joined at the sides of their heads, they had never been able to directly look at each other in the eyes.  They had been abandoned by their young, unwed mother after their birth.  The nurse attending the twins took them home with her, and so they lived with "Aunt Lovey" and "Uncle Stash" and were loved and cared for dearly.  Through-out their years, many people entered their lives and they strove for as much normalcy as possible. Rose was writing the book as she was dying. The twins managed to live until they were thirty years old and they were proud to hold that record.

The story is fascinating.  The author writes well and captivatingly.  The characters were all very well-developed and interesting.  This was a book that I could hardly put down, and once I finished it, thought about it for several days.  Good book!

my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry

I loved A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman.  Some people had raved about my grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry, also by him, so I read it.  It was disappointing for me.


It is the story of Elsa, a seven year old girl, and her relationship with her rather eccentric grandmother. Sadly, her grandmother died, but she left a kind of treasure hunt of letters for Elsa to deliver to those she felt like she had wronged.  As Elsa goes through the story, she, of course, learns about her grandmother and her grandmother's life, including the difficult relationship between her grandmother and her mother.

I enjoyed the actual story of the book.  My grandmother was one of the very most important people in my life, so I love reading about those relationships.  What I didn't like about the book was the stories that the grandmother told Elsa about the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas.  I'm sure that there was symbolism in these stories that I should have studied, but I just didn't care to do that.

It's just not a book that I would recommend.

sweet water

I have read a couple of books by Christina Baker Kline and when I saw sweet water at the used bookstore I decided to try it.  I'm glad I did, because I couldn't even put it down! I found it to be a very interesting story.
This story is told by two women...Cassie Simon and her grandmother, Clyde.  The women tell their stories to the reader alternately.

The book begins with the grandmother telling the story of the night her daughter, Cassie's mom Ellen, died. Cassie lost her mother when she was three years old.  She and her father moved from the Sweet Water, Tennessee area to the East coast right after that.  So Cassie did not know her mother's parents, Amory and Clyde.  Cassie worked in New York City at an art gallery. One day she received a call from Tennessee informing her that her grandfather had died and left her the old family home and some land.  Cassie decided to move there, sight unseen to try to get back on track with her sculpting.

When Cassie arrived in Sweet Water she went to her grandmother's newer home and attempted to get to know her, along with her aunts, uncles and cousins.  It was clear as soon as Cassie arrived that there was something going on.  Some of the family were welcoming, others were not.  As Cassie tried to learn more about her mother Ellen's life and her death, she encountered resistance and was aware that there seemed to be family secrets going on.

As Cassie attempted to learn more, she began to piece some things together and had to help her grandmother find some peace and acceptance.

There was a line in the book that was what was written on Ellen's tombstone:

"Memory believes before knowing remembers."

It is from Faulkner's book Light in August.  The full quote is:

 "Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. Knows, remembers, believes." 

 I had never read that before.  It really struck me.

This is a book that I will read again at some point.  I really liked it.

The Clock Dance

I love Ann Tyler's books and The Clock Dance was no exception.  It is a fairly new release and I was lucky enough to get it as a Christmas gift!

The book is divided into four sections of Willa Drake's life, with each section telling about major events in Willa's life.

The first section is 1967 when eleven year old Willa's mother disappeared for several days. Her mother had left home before in a rage, but never more than overnight.  Willa's father always excused his wife by saying she was overtired or high-strung.  Willa would often make excuses for her mother's rages, too. Willa would think:

"She wasn't always angry. She had lots of good days."

The next section is 1977.  Willa was in college, her boyfriend was good-looking and popular (the senior class president) and he wanted to go home with Willa over spring break to meet her parents.  As it turned out, he had Willa's life all planned out for her.

Next was 1997 and Willa's husband died in an accident, leaving her with their two high school age boys, trying to figure out her new life.

More than half of the book takes place in 2017.  Willa wasn't very close to her boys.  She and her new husband had moved to Arizona away from her friends and she, again, was trying to figure out her life.  One day she got a call from a stranger on the East coast. Her oldest son's ex-girlfriend was in the hospital and someone needed to come and care for the woman's nine year old daughter.  Willa had never met either one of them, but she somehow felt that she needed to go.  As she became involved in their lives and those of the neighbors, Willa experienced what real connection with others was like. And that is where Willa finally was able to become her true self.

This novel is a great story of finding oneself, hope and beginning again.

People of the Book

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks was a book group choice.  I didn't really enjoy it all that much, but stuck with it.  I will admit that it got better by the end of the book.  It is a fictional novel based on a true story. 

The story is about an Australian rare book expert, Hannah, who is chosen to go to Sarajevo in 1996 to preserve the Sarajevo Haggadah.  It had been missing for the past hundred years.  This Haggadah was a bit different from others as it had survived since the 14th century in Spain.  The other striking thing was the illustrations in the Haggadah were stunningly beautiful.  While working on the book, Hannah discovered some clues as to where the book may have been at different times.

The chapters of this novel are divided by person, place and time, with each chapter telling another piece of the mystery of where the Haggadah may have been hidden.  That's where I had the most trouble with the book.  The times of the chapters were not in chronological order and I found that quite confusing. There are also a large number of characters to try to keep straight in the reader's head.

I do think that the book was an excellent opportunity to learn more about history and what people might have done to keep the Haggadah from harm.

[SIDE NOTE: The Haggadah is a Jewish book that is read by Jewish families on the first night of Passover at the Seder meal, telling the stories of the survival of the Jewish people.]