Sally Lou's ROOT thread

I may decide to change my numeric goal. I'm counting books owned prior to January 1, 2021 plus books I own read for "assignments" which means book clubs, review books, etc.



1. Washington Black by Esi Edugyan -- bought Dec. 17th, 2020 -- finished reading Jan. 5th.
2. Hush Now, Don't You Cry, a Molly Murphy Mystery by Rhys Bowen -- bought December 13th, 2020 -- finished reading January 12th
3. Let the People Pick the President : The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College by Jesse Wegman --received Dec. 27th -- finished reading Jan. 27th
4. Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris -- bought Jan. 10th for New Dominion Book Group read -- finished reading Jan. 29th.
5. Blood Runs Coal: The Yablowski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark A. Bradley -- received Nov. 9th, 2020 -- finished reading Feb. 4th.
6. This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir by Jacqueline Winspear -- received for Christmas 2020 -- finished reading Feb. 10th.
7. Daughters of the Dream: Eight Girls from Richmond who Grew Up in the Civil Rights Era by Tamara Lucas Copeland -- received August 2020 -- finished reading Feb. 18th.
8. Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral by Jessie Redmon Fauset -- Christmas gift 2019 -- finished Feb. 23rd.
9. Face: One Square Foot of Skin by Justine Bateman -- received as LT ER book on Mar. 2nd -- finished reading Mar. 8th.
10. Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson -- book club read -- received Feb. 20th, 2021 -- finished reading Mar. 14th.
11. Delivering the Truth by Edith Maxwell -- received December 2020 -- finished reading Mar. 18th.
12. The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier. -- bought it in December 2020 and finished reading it Mar. 28th.
13. Circe by Madeline Miller -- acquired in May 2020 -- finished reading Apr. 30th.
14. Along a Storied Trail by Ann H. Gabhart -- LT ER -- finished reading May 5th.
15. Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver -- received as gift November 2019 -- finished reading May 15th.
16. Afterlife by Julia Alvarez -- bought Apr. 28th -- read for book club, finishing May 21st.
17. The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President -- and Why It Failed by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch -- acquired in late December 2020 -- finished reading May 28th.
18. The Third Mrs. Galway by Deirdre Sinnott -- LT ER -- finished reading June 12th.
19. A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell -- book club read -- bought in January, 2021 -- finished reading June 16th.
20. Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders by William R. Drennan -- bought book in the fall of 2019 -- finished reading June 20th.
21. Called to Justice by Edith Maxwell -- bought in late 2020 -- finished reading July 4th.
22. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner -- bought in 2020 -- finished reading July 18th.
23. Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts -- bought in March 2019 -- finished reading July 20th.
24. Charity's Burden by Edith Maxwell -- bought in late 2020 -- finished reading July 26th.
25. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende --book club reading for September -- finished reading Sept. 13th.
26. Chesapeake Requiem by Earl Swift -- book club reading for October -- finished Oct. 19th
27. Judge Thee Not by Edith Maxwell -- bought in late 2020 -- finished reading October 23rd
28. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich -- Northside book club -- finished reading Nov. 16th
29. Titanic, the Canadian Story Centennial Edition by Alan Hustak -- electronic book bought summer of 2020 -- finished reading Nov. 27th.
30. The Red Carnelian by Phyllis A. Whitney -- received as Secret Santa gift in 2020 -- finished reading Dec. 23rd.

Hi Allison. Good to see you for another year! Happy ROOTing.

Welcome back! Counting your book club books regardless of acquisition date sounds like a good plan. I hope they are all good ones!

Happy 2021 reading!

Happy ROOTing!

Happy 2021 Reading!

Wishing you good luck with your ROOTing goals.

Happy ROOTing!

Thanks >2 connie53:, >3 rabbitprincess:, >4 Jackie_K:, >5 mstrust:, >6 cyderry:, >7 This-n-That:, >8 MissWatson:. I'm looking forward to reading this year, and many, but not all, will probably include books for this challenge.

First ROOT for January, and first for the year: Washington Black by Esi Edugyan for a book club. This book could be considered to be of the magical realism genre. It features a young black boy, George Washington Black, who is disfigured when his face is severely burned. He is the servant of his master's brother, who takes him away from the plantation after Wash (as the boy is called) is present at a man's suicide. Wash ends up traveling to several places including England and Morocco, which seems very unlikely considering his condition. Also, all of this is supposed to occur in approximately 4 years which would put Wash from 11 to around 15 years of age; much too young to make the story like.

2nd ROOT for January: Hush Now, Don't You Cry, a Molly Murphy Mystery by Rhys Bowen.

This mystery is set in Newport, Rhode Island, at a mansion backing onto the Atlantic Ocean, and water plays a big part in the story. I enjoyed this turn of the 20th century mystery which includes some Gothic elements such as ghosts and a mansion with a tower, and has a surprising ending. More than one murder is investigated.

>10 sallylou61: That sounds really unbelievable.

3rd ROOT for January: Let the People Pick the President: The Case for Abolishing the Electoral College by Jesse Wegman.
I had not planned to read a political book so soon after the election, but the topic really interests me. (I did wait until after the inauguration to read it.). This book gives a clear history of the electoral college, and shows that it has never worked well; there have been more than 700 attempts to reform or abolish the electoral college! (p. 20). Five of our presidents have had fewer votes nationwide than their main opponent, and 15 out of 45 have had less than 50% of the popular vote (pp. 229 and 228). Mr. Wegman shows how close the government has come to abolishing the electoral college without its occurring including the effort by Senator Birch Bayh in the late 1960s through 1970s. Mr. Wegman explores and answers the myths surrounding both the electoral college and the popular voting, the latter of which is widespread in state government and local voting, and suggests a way of obtaining one person one vote without needing a Constitutional amendment.

4th ROOT for January: Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris.
Ms. McMorris wrote the book after seeing a picture of four children sitting on some steps during the great depression with a for sale sign near them. (The picture appeared in many newspapers during the depression.) This book features two children being sold against their mother's pleas that they were not for sale. The story includes dishonest journalism and the breaking of laws in an attempt to reunite the children with their mother. There are ethical questions involved in addition to the breaking of societal norms.

I'm aware that this shows 4 books read for January, and only 3 appears in the statistics on the February Progress thread. Today (Feb. 2nd), I reviewed my reading for January and discovered that the book in >13 sallylou61: qualified and added it as 3 on my list and made this number 4 instead of 3. It will all work out with total number of books at the end of this month.

1st ROOT for February and 5th overall: Blood Runs Coal: The Yablonski Murders and the Battle for the United Mine Workers of America by Mark A. Bradley.

This excellent book tells the history of the UMWA, especially under the autocratic control of Tony Boyle and the fight for the control of the union by its members led by Jock Yablonski, which resulted in the murder of Yablonski, his wife, and his 25-year-old daughter in the early morning of New Year's Eve in 1969. The 7 earlier murder attempts are described in addition to the murders and the successful trials and sentencing of all the people involved in the murders, including Tony Boyle himself who had ordered them. Boyle was more interested in living on a grand style and uniting with the mine owners than in the hazardous working conditions in the mines leading to the disabling and deaths of many miners -- either through black lung disease or mine accidents. Moreover, under Boyle's leadership the method of getting rid of people who criticized him was through murder. Mr. Bradley also gives some later history of the union and tells what has happened to the principals on both sides during the last fifty years.

>15 sallylou61: That sounds (sad but) fascinating!

2nd ROOT for February and 6th overall: This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir by Jacqueline Winspear, the author of the Maisie Dobbs series of mysteries.
I have really enjoyed the Maisie Dobbs books which I've read, and was a bit disappointed with this memoir. The first part of the book seemed to be much more about her parents than about Jacqueline herself. The chapters in most of the rest of the memoir focused on particular topics such as Jacqueline's going to school, her interest in getting a horse, stories about her large extended family, Jacqueline's working to help support the family, etc. I felt the chapter about her neighbors was rather "catty" which was not to my taste. The title of the book, "This time next year we'll be laughing" was one of her father's favorite sayings; she felt close to her father and had problems with her mother. However, most of the book was enjoyable, and the book both started off and ended with her parents' deaths which was effective.

>16 Caramellunacy: I lived in Pennsylvania when the Yablonski murders occurred, and, naturally there was a lot of talk about them. I read another book about the murders shortly after the convictions of the perpetrators, which, if I remember correctly focused more on the murders and their solving than on the union history. Also, Blood Runs Coal tells more about the two murdered women, who, of course, were people. I enjoyed learning more about them.

>17 sallylou61: Such an appropriate title for this covid time. I sure hope it will be true this time next year.

>19 connie53: So do I.

3rd ROOT for February and 7th overall: Daughters of the Dream: Eight Girls from Richmond Who Grew Up in the Civil Rights Era by Tamara Lucas Copeland.
This is an excellent memoir of 8 upper middle class black girls/women who grew up in Richmond, VA, the former capital of the Confederate States of America. It tells their stories in three sections: their school years when they were very close (1956-1968); their college and years establishing their careers and families when they had other close friends (1969-1994), and the years they got back together and renewed their friendships and closeness (1994-2018, the year the book was published). These girls grew up in very supportive, 2-parent families who valued education and tried to protect their daughters from the racial situation. The eight women were not as protective of their children, feeling they had been too protected growing up. They became "eight successful African American women. Seventy-five percent have a graduate degree ... Most of us ended up in a helping profession. ... We have a higher rate of divorce than the national average (62% vs. 50%). ... All except one of us still live within about 100 miles of Richmond, our home" (p. 219 for all quotes). Interwoven within the whole story is what was happening racially in the United States at the time described and their feeling or their parents feeling about the events.

4th ROOT for February and 8th overall: Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral by Jessie Redmon Fauset.
This novel was written during the Harlem Renaissance. Although Angela Murray, a very light-skinned black woman who tries to pass for white, is featured in this novel, several other people trying to pass for white are also included. The story, which mainly takes place in Philadelphia and New York City, shows the trials of families with members of various shades of color and how the actions of individual family members can impact their friends, families, and fellow workers. The prejudices and injustices against blacks are vividly portrayed.

I read the novel for the story. The printing of this particular edition, which is in the Oshun Publishing African-American Studies Series, is terrible. Numerous times commas instead of periods are used; some compound words, including people's names, are spelled as two words; often when quotation marks are used for conversation, there are spaces between the quotation marks and text; and occasionally only a few words of the text are on a line with the continuation of it on the next line.

1st ROOT for March and 9th overall: Face: One Square Foot of Skin by Justine Bateman
I received this as a LT ER book. According to the publisher's ad, this "book was based on “older face” experiences of the author" and dozens of people she interviewed. I assumed that the stories would primarily be about the elderly -- people who actually had older faces, and was deeply disappointed to discover that there were more stories about women in their 30s or younger (12) than in their 60s or over (5). In my opinion, the story about the first grade teacher teaching her students about what a face could do was entirely inappropriate. The stories featured people with money who could afford to pamper their faces and have various operations to make them appear younger. Some of the women felt pressured by society or their professions to look young. Several stories showed how men valued women on pretty faces; one story dealt with a man's asking his wife to tell the wife of a new employee to get a face lift so not to appear ugly at company functions. Fortunately, by the end of the book, more of the stories were about women's valuing their aging faces.

2nd ROOT for March and 10th overall: Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson.
I enjoyed the book festival program featuring Ms. Woodson more than reading her book featuring a young teenage couple from different social classes who have a baby girl. It follows the lives of the various family members, with emphasis on the mother (Iris), but is not in chronological sequence. Somehow, I missed some key points in reading it. This is the second year Jacqueline Woodson was supposed to be featured at the festival, which was cancelled at the last minute last year because of the pandemic. Our local public library has featured one of her books for our local community read both years. I really enjoyed last year's book Brown Girl Dreaming, a memoir written in poetry. We had a lively discussion about Red at the Bone at our book club meeting this week; we were sorry that we do not have any black members who could have told us their interpretation of the book.

3rd ROOT for March and 11th overall: Delivering the Truth by Edith Maxwell.

This is the first book in the Quaker Midwife Mystery series, which features midwife Rose Carroll. I tend to not read series in order; I started out with no. 3, but plan to read the rest in order. Delivering the Truth includes two fires and two murders. Rose thinks that the wrong man has been put in jail for the first murder and tries to solve the mystery of the main fire and both murders. (She caught the man setting the second fire.) In the process of solving the mysteries, she gets into great danger, but is rescued by the actions of another woman.

I'm glad to have found another Quaker mystery series to read. There are very few of them.

Just popping in to wish you and yours a Happy Easter, Sally Lou.

4th Root for March and 12th overall (although reported in mid-April): The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier

Each year the past three years, our Friends Meeting Library Committee has sponsored a meeting-wide Big Read to coincide with the U.S. National Library Week. This year we read The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier and had a lively discussion about it. The book is about a young Quaker woman, Honor Bright, who leaves her home in England to travel to Ohio with her sister who is going there to be married to a man they knew from their Meeting community in England. Honor herself has recently been jilted by her fiance. The women endure the long boat journey to America during which Honor is constantly sick. Unfortunately, the sister dies in America as they are on their way to Ohio. When Honor gets to Ohio, she discovers that she was not expected; the letter announcing her coming with her sister had not arrived. The book is about Honor's adjusting to life in rural Ohio in an environment in which the Quakers are very unwelcoming, and expect her to marry soon or go home to England. Honor gets married into a family in which her mother-in-law in particular is very unfriendly to her. Honor, a quiet person, learns about many new things including slave catchers and the underground railroad. Fortunately, she finds support from two non-Quaker women, one of whom is a long escaped slave, and becomes involved in the underground railroad.

Honor was an excellent sewer, and much of the book featured quilt-making including the differences between English and American quilts. Some of the men in our group felt there was entirely too much discussion about quilts although the women found it very important to the story.

We learned a lot about Honor's struggles and feelings through reading her letters to her parents and best friend back in England.

I searched my digital books and found this book there, so I put it on my list to read sometime in the future.

Only ROOT for April and 13th ROOT overall: Circe by Madeline Miller.
I didn't really enjoy this book until I was approximately a quarter of the way through (which covered Circe's relationship to her father, etc.). Then I got involved in reading about how Circe dealt with other women and with Odysseus and his two sons, and the book became much more interesting. Also, I got more familiar with the various characters including the many gods, goddesses, and kings and other humans. Fortunately, there was a list of characters at the end of the book with brief identifications; I referred to that list frequently as I read the book. Circe was able to perform a lot of magic.

First ROOT for May and 14th overall: Along a Storied Trail by Ann H. Gabhart.
Tansy Calhoun, the central character of Along a Storied Trail, is a packhorse librarian who lends books to people in rural Eastern Kentucky during the Depression. The area that Tansy services lacks roads that cars can travel. Although Tracy is the main character of the novel, there are numerous supporting characters; the novel has several threads. There is a love triangle, and several couples trying to decide whether to marry. This love story is both about love between characters and of love of the land. It is a story of community, of people, no matter how poor, helping each other. Several governmental work programs are mentioned; the packhorse library project is a WPA project; Caleb Barton had just returned home from a CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) project farther South; and Damien Fielding was an "outsider", a writer from New York City researching stories for a book in the American Guide Series.

The book contains a fair amount of religion.

Second ROOT for May and 15th overall: Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver.
I think of Mary Oliver as a poet. I enjoyed reading her essays in Upstream: Selected Essays. Most of the essays were about nature and how Ms. Oliver experienced it. The first sections of the book particularly were very calming. Ms. Oliver also wrote about other authors including Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and, to a small extent, William Wordsworth. I particularly liked her last essays which included aging and Provincetown where she lived for many years.

Third ROOT for May and 16th overall: Afterlife by Julia Alvarez
I read this book for a book club. It's the story of the sisterhood four Latino sisters who immigrated to the United States many years ago. It's also the story of two young immigrants from Mexico - Mario and Estela, who the recently widowed Antonia helps. Estela is pregnant by a man who is not Mario who initially does not know about her condition. The story has several threads, immigration including undocumented immigrants, what is the obligation to aid others, and mental illness. This is a relatively short novel in which the threads are not pulled together. I found it a disappointing read as did many of the others in our book group.

Fourth ROOT for May and 17th overall: The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President -- and Why It Failed by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch. This plot was to kill Abraham Lincoln in Baltimore, Maryland, as he traveled on his way to his inauguration. Lincoln was traveling from his home in Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, D.C., by train, taking a long, circuitous route through upstate New York to be able to see people along the way. (He was relatively unknown when elected.) In the North he was greeted by enthusiastic crowds, even in the small towns. However, he also had to go through Maryland, a state with strong Southern sympathies, to get to Washington. Along the way, Lincoln stayed at hotels overnight, and in the cities had to transfer from one train line to another which used different stations. A group in Baltimore followed Lincoln's route very carefully with the plan to kill him as he changed trains in that city. A railroad owner expected Southerners to destroy his railroad lines before reaching Washington, and hired a detective to investigate. The detective was Allan Pinkerton, who brought a number of his detectives, especially as they investigated plots to kill Lincoln. The detectives and the plotters used hotels as their headquarters.

I enjoyed this book, which also gave some background on Lincoln's life prior to his nomination of the Republican ticket for president, the nomination, and what happened to the various characters after Lincoln arrived successfully in Washington. Mr. Meltzer and Mr. Mensch wrote the story in numerous very short chapters and kept switching from the detectives to the plotters to Lincoln. With the coming of the Civil War, the plotters were never charged or tried for their plot.

First ROOT for June and 18th overall: The Third Mrs. Galway by Deirdre Sinnott.
This book is a fictional account of slavery unrest in upstate New York in the 1830s. It includes runaway slaves, free blacks, slave catchers, the conflict between abolitionists who wanted to free slaves and send them back to Africa and those who wanted to let freed blacks continue to live in the United States, those helping slaves escape, love stories, etc. Helen Galway, the Mrs. Galway in the book's title, is a young newly married woman from a sheltered background who has not been familiar with the runaway slave situation, and does not know her injured husband's view about it. She is reluctant to become involved. The book also contains family secrets. We do not learn why Helen is considered to be the third Mrs. Galway until near the end of the book.

Second ROOT for June and 19th overall: A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell (a book club read)
This is a story of Virginia Hall, a very strong-willed woman became a spy and planned much of the French resistance effort while working for the British. She did such a good job that during the war, she had to do a lot of moving around, on her artificial leg, to avoid being captured by the Nazis; she was one of their chief targets. Throughout her career, she had trouble being appointed to challenging jobs because of being a woman, and a handicapped one at that. However, the men who worked under her as a whole really appreciated her, and found her treatment by higher ups who had not experienced being in the war, very unjust.

Third ROOT for June and 20th overall: Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders by William R. Drennan.
Last year I really enjoyed reading Loving Frank, a fictional account of the love affair of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney, which of course covered the burning down of Taliesen and the murders of Ms. Cheney and six others. This nonfiction book, Death in a Prairie House, was a much inferior read in my opinion. The first half of the book was mainly about Frank's ancestors and his childhood. There is not nearly as much about Frank and Mamah's relationship.
I do not care for Mr. Drennan's style of writing. For one thing, he kept changing the names he called the various characters -- sometime using their first names and sometimes their surnames even in the same paragraph which could get confusing. Also, he tended to talk in absolutes about his opinions, some of which I disagreed with such as putting the seven murders at Taliesen as more important in culture history than those of Jeffrey Dahmer in popular history (p.6). Also, he stated that Wright's work after the murders was less important than that before. I am not an expert in architecture, but I discovered that Mark Hertzberg, an expert on Wright, panned this book as being very inaccurate.

1st ROOT for July and 21st overall: Called to Justice by Edith Maxwell.
Quaker midwife, Rose Carroll, helps solve a murder mystery in which the police have jailed an innocent black man. This mystery novel, occurring in the late 19th century in a small mill-town in Massachusetts, also involves a rape, thefts, and extreme danger to Rose herself and several people she is with including a baby.

Hi Sally Lou, trying to catch up on all ROOTers and seeing what they are reading. I hope you are doing fine and reading a lot of entertaining books.

>38 connie53:. Thanks for stopping my Connie. I'm find except for some aches and pains (due to aging), which I'm taking care of. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, and hope that you and your whole family are well. The pictures of you grandchildren are so cute.

2nd ROOT for July and 22nd overall: Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. This is a rereading of a novel I read for a book club last year, which I read for another book club this month. It is a novel about two couples and their friendship over a 40-year time span. However, most of the story is centered on their first year together when the men were junior faculty at the University of Wisconsin, with a fair amount about their last meeting approximately 40 years later with a description of their trip to Italy during the middle of this time span as a remembered interlude. There is a lot of switching between the different time periods in their lives. Both couples face major challenges in their lives; the ways the couples adapt is interesting. One of the women tries to control the lives of her family members and friends. I enjoyed this novel much more on the second reading since I could better see how it fit together.

3rd ROOT for July and 23rd overall: Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts.
This novel is a fictional account both of the lives of Frank and Maud Gage Baum and of the filming of the Wizard of Oz starring Judy Garland. When the Baums were married Frank was an actor in his own traveling company. However, the company failed and the Baums lived in poverty on the prairie in the Northwest and later in Chicago. Frank, an optimist, had several wonderful ideas and would put money into achieving them only to have them fail. However, he was a wonderful storyteller, and eventually became an author writing The Wizard of Oz and many books after that. The story of the Baums ends with his writing The Wizard of Oz. However, that novel was made into a movie, and Maud Baum, nearly twenty years after her husband's death, was involved in attempting to ensure the movie was true to the book and at the same time being a support to Judy Garland. This book describes both the difficult 19th century life on the prairie and the treatment of movie stars at work in the 1930s. Although it is fictional, it is heavily based on facts.

>39 sallylou61: Hi Allison. I know about the aching. I'm 68 now so I know something about stiffness.

>42 connie53:. I'm 77 and my husband John is 81. For the first time ever, we do not feel like driving at least 5 hours each way to see my brother and his wife. However, they have not come to see us recently either. My brother will be 75 next month, and my sister-in-law just turned 72. I think that the time through covid has aged us. Of course, everyone who survived went through the covid pandemic, some more successfully than others.

Have you seen your adult children and grandchildren recently?

>Hi Allison, It's so strange to hear you are 77. You writing seems younger. And yes, we elderly people tend to keep more safe from Covid than the younger generations since our health is not 100 % anymore. High blood pressure being one of my things.
In 5 hours you can drive through The Netherlands from north to south and in less time than that from the east to the west. We have such a small country!

I've seen everybody in the last 5 months or so. Before that we were more careful but now we are fully vaccinated.

Mid august we celebrated Marie's second birthday and Cyrille, her dad, 39th birthday. Marie was born on his birthday! And we all came together without Peet because he was already admitted to the care facility for revalidation purposes.

>44 connie53:. Sorry to be so late in replying to your message. I tend to come into this challenge only when I have another book to add.
Yes, I'm still 77 and my husband is still 81. We will both be having birthdays in November.

I'm glad to hear that Peet is in a facility close to you now, and hope that he continues to improve. You have really had a lot to cope with recently. I hope that you are no longer having trouble with your balance. Glad to hear that you all had a good time at Marie's and Cyrille's birthday celebration.

Around 50 years ago my parents and I enjoyed visiting the Netherlands. Our "home base" there was my aunt's house in Veere; we found the town charming. We took a number of trips around the country including Amsterdam where we visited the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum among other things. We also went to Delft to see the pottery and tiles, and to the town of Mook, which my father particularly enjoyed because that was our surname; my maiden name is Mook. We bought some souvenir spoons with Mook on them.

4th ROOT for July and 24th overall: Charity's Burden by Edith Maxwell
Charity was a young mother who had had 6 children by the time she was in her early 30s; she supposedly died of an abortion, which midwife Rose Carroll thought probably was murder. Rose becomes involved in finding out who provided the "abortion." In doing so, she experiences danger in someone's trying to murder her under very similar methods to an earlier novel. A difference in this novel is that Rose has the respect of the police detective who welcomes her help instead of being an adversary.

The novel provides a good description of a Quaker marriage when Rose's niece gets married.

First ROOT for September and 25th overall: A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende
This was my book club selection for September. Much of this novel takes place in Spain but particularly in Chile during the civil wars/political unrest in those countries in the late 1930s/early 1940s although the last part of the book brings the stories of the main characters up to 1994. The themes of the book include displacement/immigration, surviving political unrest, and love in various forms and relationships. Where and what is home are important. The two main characters are Victor and Roser who are forced to marry to come on the SS Winnipeg to escape Spain and come to Chile; Roser is the pregnant widow of Victor's brother. However, there are many other characters and several story lines in the plot.

>45 sallylou61:. Mook is not that far from where I live. Only one hour by car. I know Veere. That is a lovely little town indeed.

Peet is still in the facility but he will move to a permanent care place since he can't live it home anymore. The danger of a fall is too great and he needs to climb stairs here. We did make plans to adapt the house to his needs. But his doctor let us know it would be to much of a burden for me and to dangerous for him. He needs to be watched 24/7 and that is impossible because his mental health is getting worse too. He promises not to walk on his own, even using his rollator, but he keeps forgetting this promise.
I have been living on my one in a house for the first time in my live and I an used to that now. It's really sad he can't be living here anymore, but we have to deal with that.

Hi Connie,
I'm glad to hear that you are getting accustomed to living by yourself; I imagine that is a big adjustment. It was just the opposite for me since I did not get married until my early 30s and lived on my own during my adult life before that.

You have certainly been a big help to Peet by visiting him so often. However, you are wise not to try to do more than you can handle; your health and well-being are certainly important. Fortunately, both you and Peet have children living nearby.

Best wishes.

First ROOT for October and 26th overall: Chesapeake Requiem by Earl Swift.
This was an interesting read; it is about the disappearing Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay and the people who live on it. They recognize that the island is disappearing but think it is caused by erosion instead of global warming. Many of the men who live there are watermen who depend upon crabbing for a living. I found the most interesting parts of the story to be about the history and culture of the island rather than how crabbing is performed.

The author, Earl Swift, is a journalist who went and lived with the people on the island. He was very respectful of their way of life and gained their confidence to write a true account.

Second ROOT for October and 27th overall: Judge Thee Not by Edith Maxwell, a Quaker Midwife Mystery.

In addition to being the main midwife in Amesbury, MA, in the late 1880s, Rose Carroll is involved in helping a chief police detective in solving murders. In this novel she is aided by a very intelligent blind woman who has excellent hearing skills and works as an interpreter. Among the topics described in this book are prejudices against the blind and against lesbians. The murdered woman is wealthy and a philanthropist but poor at interpersonal relations, and disliked by many in the community. The mystery is more complex than many in the series.

First ROOT for November and 28th (of 30) overall: The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich.
The Night Watchman in the novel, which is based on the author's grandfather, is a Chippewa council member who is involved in trying to keep the federal government from breaking a Native American treaty and removing these Native Americans from a reservation where they have lived for several generations. The novel clearly describes the prejudice shown against the Native Americans, especially any women who go off the reservation into the city. Unfortunately, there are numerous characters in the novel, and several of us in the book club had difficulty keeping the characters straight.

Second ROOT for November and 29th overall: Titanic, the Canadian Story Centennial Edition by Alan Hustak.
As one can guess from the title, this account is centered on the Canadians or passengers going to Canada. It begins with background information about wealthy Canadians who sailed on the Titanic. The book covers all aspects of the Canadian experience including what cabins some of the passengers were in, their experiences on board and of being rescued or not, the coverage of the sinking by Canadian newspapers, and brief biographies of the survivors including their lives after the Titanic and when they died. Appendices give lists of the Canadian passengers according to their class on board; those who did not survive are in bold print. The wealthy Canadians often included whole families traveling together; some of the lower class people were immigrating to Canada. Many of these passengers were young being the adult children of the wealthy or immigrants coming to join relatives already in Canada.

Hi Sally Lou. Just popping in again!

>50 sallylou61:. Thanks for your kind thoughts! It took some time but I'm now comfortable with living on my own.

First ROOT for December and 30th overall (reaching my goal): The Red Carnelian by Phyllis A. Whitney.
Although I read several books by Whitney as a teenager and have read at least one other of her adult novels, this particular mystery had too much terror for my tastes.

Congratulations on reaching your goal!

Hello Allison!

Congrats on reaching your goal



Trying to catch up on threads again. I want to wish you