This well written, character driven novel has dual time lines that take place in 1928 and 1978 in a small Missouri town. The story line is based on the Flowers sisters - identical twins Violet and Rose. In the 1978 time line, we also meet Lettie -Rose's daughter and Daisy - Rose's granddaughter.

1928 - Rose and Violet were twins in looks but had totally different personalities. Violet was always looking for a good time and loved to spend time dancing at the local dance hall. Rose was quiet and enjoyed being home. Despite their differences, the twins were very close and shared all of their secrets with each other. One night in August, 1928, their lives changed dramatically. Violet had gone to the local dance hall with her boyfriend. During that evening, a huge explosion at the dance hall claimed the lives of dozens of young people including Violet. Rose struggled with the loss of her sister and ended up marrying the son of the owners of the local funeral home.

1978 - Possum Hills was still a small town where everyone knew what was going on with all of the people in town. Rose still owned the funeral home and was estranged from her only child Letty, who had left town as soon as she could and never looked back. One day, Lettie arrived with a boyfriend and her 15 year old daughter. Lettie's stop in town was short -- she dumped her daughter with a grandmother that she never knew and then Lettie left town to start a new life in California with her boyfriend. Daisy wasn't happy with being in small town Missouri. She and her grandmother lived upstairs and the funeral home was below them. She didn't really know or understand her grandmother and didn't know anyone in town. She managed to get an internship at the local newspaper and learned about the dance hall fire fifty years earlier. She wanted to do a story about the fire to commemorate the 50th anniversary but when she tries to talk to the survivors, most of them don't want to talk about it. This small town holds some big secrets, and the more Daisy looks into the history of the town, the more secrets that come to light. Will the secrets that she uncovers bring the people in town closer to each other or will they continue to ignore the truth of the fire?

This book had some fantastic characters - Daisy was an inquisitive young girl who had a hard life moving around with her mother. At the beginning, she hated the small town and wasn't too impressed with her grandmother Rose. Even though Rose could be difficult and outspoken, she still wished for a relationship with her granddaughter. Rose was appalled when Daisy wanted to learn more about the fire fifty years earlier and wanted the town secrets to remain secrets. But are the prices that we pay for secrets worth avoiding the truth? The story is about grief and loss but also about love and forgiveness. This is a family of strong women that I won't forget. This is a debut novel for this author and I look forward to her future books.

In the early 1950s, there was only one way for a woman to get a divorce if she had the money. She would stay at a ranch in Nevada for 6 weeks to establish residency and then go before a judge and tell him that she intended to stay there - even though most of them didn't stay. This book is a look at one of those ranches and the group of women who are staying there.

Lois is a rather pathetic character and I had to keep reminding myself that it was the 1950s and women had fewer choices in their lives but really - even in that time period she could have stood up for herself and quit trying to make people like her by telling lies about her life. The author gave a lot of insight on Lois and I think the reason that I didn't really like her had more to do with her reflection of the time period she lived in. I wish we'd have learned more about the other women who were at the ranch with Lois other than the fact that they all drank and partied too much. I thought that the middle of the book was rather slow but once Greer arrived and June became more 'alive', the story picked up.

Overall, I enjoyed this look at women's lives during this time period. This was a debut novel for this author and I look forward to future books from her.

This historical fiction book is very well written and researched. It's a dual timeline book but not really. The modern day part of the story is only about 10 of the novel to introduce Zora and the mystery surrounding her at the beginning and the result of the research at the end. Most of the story is about the transformation of a quiet shy poor girl who takes in sewing to becoming a well known designer who manages to find love along the way while constantly fighting her feelings of not being good enough no matter what success she was having.

In 2023, Sylvia is a conservator for the Smithsonian. She is in charge of a group working on a presentation of the clothes worn in a movie that came out in the 1920s. Every piece of clothing had to be perfect which meant repairing tears and sewing sequins back on. When she is working on a dress worn by Greta Garbo in the movie, the label of the dress designer falls out and she sees the name Zora Lily under the tag. This is enough to make her want to research who Zora Lily was and why her name is on the movie dresses.

We first meet Zora in 1924. She lives an improvised life with her mother, alcoholic father and 6 siblings. She spends her days repairing dresses with her mother even as she dreams of designing dresses. One night her friend Rose talks her into going out to a club and it begins to change Zora. She enjoys the freedom and when she gets a job as a nanny for a rich couple, she sees how rich people live. The more she is around people other than her family, the more she is sure that she needs to follow her dreams and become more self-reliant. Her ambition even takes her to Hollywood but is the fame worth losing her family and her dreams? She has to make major decisions about what she really wants out of life and whether the cost of the dreams is worth making them come true.

I loved the character of Zora. She remained true to herself even when she was put into difficult situations. Her family remained her touchstone and she was always happiest when she was with them. Her romance is really exciting even though I was never sure of what the outcome would be and if there was too much difference between Zora and Harley to keep them from having their happily ever after.

The other thing that I found exciting about this book was the description of the clothes. The clothes Zora designed for the women in the clubs and for a Hollywood movie and how her experience made her an even better seamstress and designer. I ended up goggling a lot of the fashion from this time in history so that I could picture what was being described.

This book is a tremendous coming of age novel full of fantastic characters and descriptions of lots of beautiful clothes. I highly recommend it!

This is a beautifully written and well-researched novel about the human toll of Operation Pied Piper in England in 1939. The war was ramping up and the government made people in the cities send their children to assumed safety in the rural areas of England. Almost 3 million children were evacuated during the first four days of the operation and ultimately more than 3.5 million children were relocated.

The story begins in 1935 in Liverpool. Viv lives with her parents and they are very strict Catholics. The plans for her life were that she marry a Catholic man and have babies while staying in the working class area of the city. After a brief fling with a Jewish man, Joshua, Viv finds that she's pregnant. The only solution was for them to marry. He agreed but right after the marriage when Viv's mother offered him money to leave, he left for New York to try to make a living as a saxophone player in the clubs. Viv had no choice but to move back with her parents who treated her like a servant and never let her forget that she had committed a major sin by having a baby out of wedlock. Five years after her beloved daughter, Maggie was born, Viv was forced by the local Catholic priest (with pressure from her parents) to send her daughter to a family in the country for her safety. She didn't want to send her daughter away but decided that it was safer for her daughter out in the country than in an area that would surely be dangerous for her. She planned to visit her daughter frequently and saw how affluent the family was that she was living with. She decided to get a job - partially to get away from her disapproving parents and partially to save enough money to bring her daughter home at the end of the war. At the same time Joshua, now living in NYC, decides to return to England to fight in the RAF. He is finally beginning to realize what a mistake it was to leave England and his wife and baby. When Viv finds out that the safe haven where she sent her daughter isn't safe at all when German planes drop bombs on the home where her daughter is living. There were twists and turns after Viv met Joshua again and they had to re-define their relationship and Viv had to re-start her life despite her grief.

This wonderful story is told mainly from two points of view. Viv's is story of love for her daughter in the midst of condemnation from her parents. She always sees the best in people and is able to forgive some - but not all - of the wrongs that were done to her. Joshua was basically a coward when he ran to NYC and he had to learn how to forgive himself for his earlier life. Viv and Maggie were my two favorite characters, with Joshua in the middle and I absolutely loathed Viv's mother who never had a kind word for her daughter or granddaughter and treated Viv like a slave.

This was a novel about family and love, forgiveness and redemption but mostly it's a story of how one decision can change someone's entire future. My thanks to the author for creating a story and characters that I won't soon forget.

The Mitford family was a prominent part of English society in the years between World War I and II. The six sisters were considered the Bright Young Things of their time and they were all outspoken and strong women and were very close. Marie Benedict has written a historical fiction novel about this real family and the scandals that they created as England went to war with Germany.

Even though there were six sisters, the novel predominately focuses on three of them

-Diana was a beautiful woman who was married to the heir of the Guinness fortune She gave up her prominent place in society and divorced her husband to have an affair with the charismatic fascist leader who was still married.
-Unity was the sister who became a Nazi and was rumored to be the mistress of Hitler. She moved to Germany and was enthralled with Hitler and his leadership of Germany. She made no secret of her love of Hitler and his government.
-Nancy was the most normal of the three sisters and despite the fact that they had been close as children, their closeness waned after Diane and Unity became so political. Nancy was a novelist who often poked fun at her sisters and other important people in society in her books. She had some interest in the fascist movement in England but when the war became imminent, she made a choice to support the English government and helped the government when her two sisters were accused of being spies.

The author did extensive research into the sisters and the political climate that existed in England between the two world wars. This is a story about family and the love between sisters but more importantly it's about one sister making a choice between her loyalty to her family and her loyalty for her country.

Twenty-one year old Tanner doesn't want to do much but sleep and play video. In the past, she had great plans but an accident caused her to lose her scholarship and she had to come home. She is so upset with the changes in her life that she doesn't exert any energy trying to find a job or planning to go back to school. Her parents try to help her by getting her a job as a live in caretaker for an 84 year old woman who has broken her hip. Louise feels that she's capable of taking care of herself but her daughter insists that she needs a live-in caretaker. The initial meetings between Tanner and Louise don't give either of them fonder feelings about each other. In the beginning, they totally ignore each other. Tanner plays video games while Louise entertains herself and insists on her two fingers of vodka every afternoon. Soon Tanner begins to notice some strange things at the house. When she sees a news report of police looking into jewel heist forty years earlier, she's shocked to see that one of the thieves looks just like Louise. Things get even stranger when Louise goes to Tanner's room in the middle of the night and tells her that she will pay Tanner for taking her to California but they have to leave right now.. Even though Tanner has no idea what's going on, she leaves with Louise. She has no idea why they are leaving in the middle of the night but suspects that it has something to do with the jewelry heist years ago.

The road trip is their chance of getting to know each other. Gradually their negative feeling disappear and they realize that there are in this together. The banter between the two main characters is often very humorous with some laugh out loud moments. Louise is a feisty 84 year and her character provided the most laughs for me.

This charming and unique story of a developing friendship between two very different characters is heartfelt and humorous. Their road trip across the country is full of problems - like finding parts for the vintage Jaguar that they are driving but the more time they spend together, the more they learn to like and respect each other.

This is my favorite book by this author. It's a quick read with a bit of mystery, a bit of romance and two very real and lovable main characters that I won't soon forget.

Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and request.

I read a lot of WWII fiction and it always amazes me that there are still parts of the war that have never been written about in popular fiction. Jennifer Coburn did extensive research of Nazi state supported homes where unwed mothers who were deemed to be perfectly Aryans could be pampered until they had their children and then the home arranged for the children to be adopted mostly by SS members. Many women volunteered for the 'breeding program' to do their part for Germany in the war. She tells this unique story using three women who were at the home at the same time but had totally different backgrounds and views of the Nazis. Two of the women are patients at Heim Hochland, a real Nazi breeding home in Bavaria, where they are awaiting the birth of their children and one of the women is a nurse working at the maternity home.

Gundi is a pregnant university student from Berlin. She is beautiful and deemed a pure Aryan but the authorities don't know that she is a member of a resistance group. She is also hiding a big secret about the father of her baby and knows that when the truth comes out, it will likely cause her death and the death of the baby.

Hilde, only eighteen, is a true believer in the Nazi regime and knows that if she gets pregnant with the child of a Nazi official, her life will be wonderful. She is assertive and difficult and feels like she is superior to the rest of the women at the maternity home.

Irma, a 44-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after she breaks up with the love of her life. She had worked as a nurse in WWI and saw so much death that she was excited to work in a maternity home and see beautiful births.

This well researched book about a little known subject gives the readers a look at a very dark time in WWII history. Women were only appreciated for their ability to have babies and women who had four babies were given The Cross of Honour of the German Mother.

This is a book about hatred and the need to breed perfect children but the underlying theme is that there is always a light of good - no matter how small - even in the darkest times.

I read a lot of WWII fiction and am always amazed when I read a book that looks at the war from a different perspective and is full of new things for me to learn. The author did considerable research and it shows on every page. This is a dual time line book that looks at Fenna's life at 10 years old in Upper Michigan copper country and the other time line is about her life throughout WWII.

1942 - When the novel begins, Fenna is presenting her magic act in front of a crowd. From a young age, she was intrigued with Houdini and his magic act where he was able to defy reality and escape from restraints. Fenna has a knack for creating new magic tricks and she and her helper, Charles, have intrigued the audience. After the show, she is approached by a gentleman who asks her if she'd be interested in going to London to work with British intelligence to create items to help prisoners of war in Germany. Together they create things like a razor that is really a compass and a board game with a map hidden in it. She becomes known as the 'gadget girl' while she's working for M19 outside of London. When a test of her loyalty draws her into occupied Europe, she has to decide what is really important in her life and if she can overcome her past.

1928 - Fenna's mother died several years earlier so her family is just her and her father. He is a cooper miner who is on strike for better working conditions. While they are at a Christmas gathering with several hundred people, someone yells FIRE and she becomes trapped in the stairwell with a mob trying to get out of the building. This part of the story is based on the Italian Hall Disaster of 1913 where 73 people - mostly children - were killed trying to escape a building. Fenna is almost suffocated but manages to escape with the help of a young boy, Arie who lives in her apartment building. The fire and the young boy both become important parts of the rest of her life. Because of the fire, she has panic attacks if she is in a confined area and feels as if she's suffocating. Arie tries to help her and takes her to a Houdini film to watch the escape artist perform magic tricks. After that film, she becomes enamored with magic tricks and develops some of her own.

This story about two traumatized children who grow up to be troubled adults and the ways that they hide their hurt and their love from each other and from the world around them. It's a story of family, love, bravery and forgiveness as these two people - Fenna and Arie - grow up and become part of the war effort and have to decide what is really important in their lives.

Be sure to read the Author's Notes at the end of the book. She shares a lot of information on what was true in her novel as well as the real people she based some of her characters on.

If you enjoy World War II fiction, you don't want to miss this book. It's always interesting to get a different look at the war and the ways that British intelligence worked to help their troops. Plus I always enjoy a book with a strong female character who commits acts of bravery to help others.

The novel starts in 1955 in New York City where Rachel lives with her husband Aaron. Rachel has only been in the United States for several years after entering the country from Germany as a displaced person with her uncle, her only family left alive after the war. She tries to acclimate to life in New York as a housewife but is consumed with her memories of war time Berlin and the survivor's guilt that haunts her.

Even though Rachel is living what should be a happy life with her husband, her memories are easily triggered about her life in Berlin during the war. Her husband had been in the Army during the war but never left the US and she tells him constantly that he has no idea of what it was like to be a Jew in Berlin during the war...how she and her mother, a famous painter, hid in plain sight and tried not to be discovered by the Gestapo...how she never had enough food and rarely had a bed to sleep in. Every day was a struggle and when she and her mother were discovered by the Gestapo, life got much worse as they struggled to stay alive despite the ever growing threats to their lives. Now she's in New York and can buy food, travel round town, dress well and always has a place to sleep. Her husband loves her and tries to make her happy but she is so overwhelmed with her survivor's guilt that she isn't able to truly return his love. Her mind is constantly remembering her life in Germany with her mother and it takes very little for her to remember her past.

When her uncle calls and tells her that he's found one of her mother's painting at a pawnshop, she has to see it despite the memories that it brings. Rachel believed that all of her mother's paintings were destroyed by the Germans. She tries to buy it but someone else buys it first. Rachel is also an artist but won't return to her painting because she feel that her talent is nothing compared to her mother. Aaron tries to help her acclimate to her life in New York but is not successful. He would love to have children but doesn't push the issue because she just doesn't feel like she can bring a child into this world or be a good mother to her child.

I read many WWII era books but this is the first one I've read that takes such a introspective look at a survivor of the war and the way they deal with their guilt - not only that they survived and others didn't but also their thoughts that they could have done something - anything to save people that they loved. This is a beautiful look at loss and love and learning to live with memories of the past.

This is a fantastic, well written book about survival, redemption and learning to love again - not only your family but more importantly yourself. This book haunted me after I finished it and I was unable to start a new book for a few days. Even weeks after I finished it, I still think about Rachel and her valiant struggle to learn from her past and not allow her past memories control her current life.

Amy is from a well to do family and believed that she would never find love. When she met Edward at a church, they both became interested in each other and went on many secret dates before he enlisted in the army. Their dates had to be secret because her parents would never approve of someone in a lower class. When she received notification that he was missing in action, presumed dead, Amy decided to go to France to find him or find his body to bring home for burial. She didn't know what to expect when she arrived in France and went to the battlefields where soldiers were working to identify the dead with many of the unknowns being buried in mass graves. She encountered barbed wire, putrid water, and rat-infested tunnels everywhere she searched. Would she ever find Edwards body or was there a chance that he was still alive?

The author did considerable research to write this book about the unknown soldiers left in France and Belgium. It's a dark book filled with grief. Parts of it were difficult to read but weren't there for shock value but were based on information from the war. Amy is well written character and what she went through to find Edward's body was horrific. Not only was she told over and over that a woman shouldn't be in that area but her determination and tenaciousness helped her through the worst times. Most women in this era would never have gone to some of the places that she went looking for information. Actually most women would have never gone at all.

This dark novel is about solders who have given their all. It's beautifully written about an often ignored time in history. Thanks to the author's research, this book gives the reader more information about WWI and the after effects - including PTSD, drug usage, shell shock and horrible injuries.

Several years ago, I visited a World War I cemetery in Belgium Military cemeteries are always sad but this cemetery was even worse. Many of the crosses had no name on them and it was depressing that so many soldiers were lost in WWI that went unnamed and uncelebrated.

Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and review.

My two favorite genres are historical fiction and southern fiction. So this book set in North Carolina in the early 1940s was a perfect book for me. It's one of few books that after I read the last page, I wanted to go back and read it for the first time again. I am probably one of the few people who hasn't read this author's first book but as soon as I finished this book down, I ordered If the Creek Don't Rise from Amazon.

The story is told from the POV of two thirteen year old girls. Lucy lives in the eastern part of NC with her family. She is a reader and a lover of Nancy Drew mysteries. She loves to learn and is always using difficult words. Allie Bert Tucker , known as Bert, is from the mountains of NC. After her mother died in childbirth, she was sent to the eastern part of the state to help an aunt she'd never met. She felt like she was the reason that her mother died and looked at this trip as a banishment from her family. "My punishment is exile from my homeland." (p 22) When Lucy and Bert meet for the first time, they decide to be friends. Eventually, the living arrangements with her aunt changes and Bert goes to live with Lucy's family. All sorts of strange happenings in the town - a man goes missing, a woman stops speaking - Lucy decides that she and Bert can be Nancy Drew and solve the mysteries. Bert isn't so sure of this but agrees because they are friends. The two girls spend their days working with bee hives because their father has a contract from the government for beeswax and in their free time, they work to solve the mysteries in town. The more they try to learn about what's going on, the more the mysteries continue to happen.

This book is a picture of a small southern town in the 40s. Along with the two main characters, there are lots of other characters - from Lucy's nurturing mom to the quirky Trula Freed who can tell the future. The main lesson that Lucy and Bert learn is that family is made up not just through blood but also through the people who love and care about you.

Fantastic southern fiction!

Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

This is a book that I'd have never picked up -- a coming of age story about boys! Really? I won a copy from BookBrowse and knew I had to give it a chance. Wow - am I ever glad that I did. This debut novel was fantastic -- it not only featured the two young boys but also the adults in their lives. I laughed with the two boys and at times their friendship and honesty with each other made me cry. This is a book that I won't soon forget.

It's 1994 in a small town in Wisconsin. Fish has spent the summer with his grandfather ever since his father died three years ago. His best friend Bread lives with an extremely abusive father who constantly terrorizes him. The boys became best friends as soon as they met and they spend their summer in the woods, playing games and making up stories for their enjoyment. Until the summer night that Fish sees Bread's father hitting him and Fish grabs a gun and shoots him. The two boys know that they are in big trouble and head off into the woods to get as far away as possible. They make it to the river, make a raft and set out on their adventure to escape. They are being tracked by four adults who want to help them - Fish's mother Miranda, a wise woman full of fierce faith; his granddad, Teddy, who knows the woods like the back of his hand; Tiffany, a purple-haired gas station attendant and poet looking for connection; and Sheriff Cal, who's having doubts about a life in law enforcement. The time the boys spend on the river is full of perilous situations that had this reader quickly turning pages to find out the outcome.

This book is more than a simple coming of age novel. It's a story about the bonds of friendship and the lengths that people will go through to help the people that they love - whether they are family by blood or family by friendship. Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and review. It was fantastic!

On her author page, Stephanie Thornton says that she "retells the stories of history's forgotten women". Jacqueline Kennedy is not exactly a forgotten woman in American history but what Americans remember about her was often very different than the real person that she was. In this well-researched book, we are able to learn about the REAL Jackie - the one often hidden from the public, the person full of doubts and fears and full of love for her family.

For many younger readers, this book will be a history book. Because I was in high school when JFK was assassinated, this book brought back many sad memories. Like most Americans, I was glued to the TV for several days, watching the pageantry in DC and crying for days. At the time, it was impossible to have any feelings for the first lady other than profound respect for the way she handled the funeral, her children and herself. She later fell off the false pedestal that America had put her on when she married Onassis but was the pedestal ever really real or was she someone just like us with doubts and fears and sadness? After reading this book, I understand so much more about her - her love for her husband despite his philandering ways, her unconditional love for her children and her fear for their safety and her wish to make a mark on Washington and be a true respected partner with her husband. Even though this was fiction, I felt like I was reading Jackie's memoir. The author did so much research and it felt like she had totally captured Jackie's voice.

Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

This is a memoir of Esther's family - four generations who are unable to pass her mother's stories to each generation because her mother's memories were so terrible that she refused to talk about them. She would occasionally give a small amount of information but would refuse to answer questions. When Esther finds out that her father had been married before and had a daughter, she know that she must travel to the Ukraine to find out all she can about her half-sister.

Esther's mother and father were both the only survivors of the Holocaust in their immediate family. Since her mother refused to share information about this horrific time, Esther spent her entire life searching for answers. Armed with only a hand drawn map and an old photograph, Esther and her son travel to the Ukraine to try to get some answers to her lifelong questions about her parents' lives. She wants to find where her father hid during the war and the people who helped him, she wants to find her mother's village and anyone who remembered her and she wants to find out information about her half sister born before the war started.

It was difficult to find out too many answers since so many people were dead but she was able to find children and grand children of the people she was searching for and get information. The town her mother grew up in was totally demolished but she found someone who grew up there and was able to show her where her mother had grown up. As she and her son travel, they find mass graves where Jewish people were shot and buried. Many of the markers on these mass graves were falling apart and covered in weeds indicating that the newer generations memory of that time in history is being lost. At each mass grave and grave marker of family members, she left a picture of her family to let her ancestors know that part of the family had survived and was 'still here'.

This was a beautiful and well written memoir about one person's goal to find the memories of her mother and pass them down to future generations so that family history wouldn't be lost.

Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

Duffy lives in an assisted living home and Carl is his roommate. During the years that they've both been residents here, they've become best friends (in fact, Carl is the only friend that Duffy has ever had) and know everything about each other's lives. Or do they? Duffy finds out that there is a lot he didn't know about Carl, when a 20ish year old woman with a black eye and the small of alcohol on her breath climbs in the window of their room and claims to be Carl's granddaughter. Josie wants to stay in their room for a week - she says to get to know her grandfather better but Duffy knows that there is more to her story. Duffy knows that he needs to stay on his best behavior at the home because he has nowhere else to go but a nearby nursing home where people are sent to die and doesn't have the quality of care that he is getting at Centennial. He sees no choice but to get rid of Josie but Carl wants to get to know his granddaughter better and wants her to stay in their room for a week and keep her hidden from management. Despite the fact that he thinks it's a really bad idea, Duffy's friendship with Carl is so strong that he agrees to let her stay. Before long, this crotchety old man who never married or had a family, starts to feel like Josie is part of his family and he strives to help her with the demons in her life no matter what the repercussions will be in his life.

This is a book about aging, love and most of all friendship; it's about making family out of the people that you care about loving them the best you can. It's a wonderful look at bravery and love in old age when you can help someone in your 'family.' Duffy is a wonderful, well rounded character who I fell in love with and really enjoyed his journey. It made me laugh and I shed a few tears, too, but I was rooting for Duffy all the way through the book.

Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

I read this beautifully written debut novel very slowly so that I didn't miss any of the lyrical writing and character development. This novel is Southern fiction at its best.

The year is 1989 and Judith Kratt is 75 years old and living in the large family home in Bound, SC with Olva, a black servant who is also her only friend. Judith has decided that she needs to make an inventory of all of the wonderful items in her home. She has no heirs but feels that she is the keeper of the Kratt family valuables and, as importantly, it's stories. "Our memories orient us just like the furniture in the sunroom." As she begins to make a list of items, she ties them to stories in her family history and at the end of every one of the 1989 chapters, there is an ongoing list of items that she's mentioned in her stories. Her memories take her back to the early 1930s when many people are suffering due to the depression. Her father is the big man in town and owns most of the mills as well as a new department store. Judith is 15 the year that the store opens and lives with her parents, sister and brother. A tragic event during this time changes the lives of her and her family forever. As Judith makes her lists in 1989, her past is gradually revealed and she is able to see her life and the effect that her attitudes as a child had on her life and the lives of the people around her. Will knowledge that she gleans from her past help her make changes or will her focus stay only on the physical items in her house?

This multi-layered story about loyalty, loss and family - not just the family that they are born into but the family created by people who love them. So sit down on that porch swing with a large glass of sweetened ice tea and prepare to walk down memory lane with Miss Judith.

The Guest Book is a sweeping saga of three generations of the very rich Milton family from the 1930s to present day. It's the story of not only how money and privilege isolate a family from the rest of the world but the way it affects their feelings about other races and religions. Each generation feeds their views and their secrets into the next until no one is really sure what is true about the family history.

The novel begins in 1935 with Ogden and Kitty Milton and their three children. They are living a very privileged life and when a tragedy happens in the family, Ogden buys an island and a grand house in Maine to help the family become whole again. The family spends their summers on the island, entertaining all of their rich friends whose lives are reflections of their own. This all begins to break down in the next generation when the 3 Milton children grow up and realize that they want different things out of life and their values are different than their parents. Moss doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps in business but wants to write music, much to his parent's dismay. One daughter marries the man who is just like her dad but the other daughter falls in love with a Jewish man which was totally not done in their upper class lives. By the next generation, the money has run out and the grandchildren have to decide if they afford to keep the island and all of their memories. Will this decision also help uncover some of the secrets from the previous two generations that have affected their lives so much?

This book is a well written look at past mistakes and betrayals that ripple throughout generations., It examines not just a privileged American family, but a privileged America.

Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

"The past doesn't go away, but there's no need to dredge it up, you can try to let it rest, hold your peace. The one thing I've learned from life is survival."

I was aware of the women who tasted food for Hitler to make sure he wasn't poisoned from reading The Taster by VS Alexander earlier this year. What makes this version of the story even more interesting is that it's based on a real person - Margot Wölk. She was Hitler's last living food taster. She had never told anyone about her experience until she was 96 and decided to tell her story. She died later the same year that she first told her story. You can read more about her and read her story if you goggle her name.

In 1943, Rosa moved to the town where her husband's parents live. Her mother has just died in a bombing in Berlin and she hasn't seen her husband since he joined the army the year before. Instead of the quiet life that she is yearning for, the SS arrive at the door and tell her that will become one of the tasters of Hitler's food. They were very worried that the Allies would try to poison Hitler so they forced a group of women to eat his food before he did. If the tasters didn't die of poison, then the food was safe for him. The ten women in the group become friends and enemies as the stress becomes unbearable.

This is a horrific story of women being forced into possible death with every bite of food that they ate. The stress of this time affected Margot for the rest of her life.

Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

We have all read about the males of the Kennedy family - Joe, Jack, Bobby and Teddy and many books have been written about them and their father. Very few books have been written about the females of the family and I knew very little about them. 'The Kennedy Debutante' is about Kathleen Kennedy - nicknamed Kick. She is the fourth child in the family, right after Joe, Jack and Rosemary. It's an in depth look at her life beginning in England when her father becomes the American ambassador. As the story begins, she is being presented into society at the beginning of her debutante season in 1938. As she becomes part of the social season in London, she makes friends with the elite young people in London and gets very close to Billy Hartington, the future Duke of Devonshire and a devout Protestant. Her strict Catholicism (as well as that of her devout mother, Rose) keeps them from taking their feelings to the next level. When WWII breaks out and the Kennedy family returns to the States, Kick has to make a decision over whether her love for Billy or the beliefs of her family are the most important to her future.

This book was a wonderful look at an member of the Kennedy family that had not been written about much in the past. Along with Kick's story, there is a lot about the rest of the family, the way the parents doted on the boys and the dad included Joe and Jack in his decision making, the problems with Rosemary, plus a tidbits about all of the other kids in the family. For a family with so many words written about them over the years, this was a refreshing look at them that was full of new information for most readers.

I highly recommend this book and predict that it will be on of the popular MUST READS of the fall.

Thanks to BookBrowse for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.

This is a beautifully written, thought provoking look at a mother and a daughter and their acceptance of each other as the mother is losing her memory to early on-set Alzheimer's. To be honest, I almost didn't read this book because I just lost my mom and I knew it would be difficult to read about losing your mom but instead this book made me more thankful for my mom because we had no great secrets and I always knew that she was a person separate from being my mom. This novel is the journey of the main character learning to love and accept her mom and to realize that he mom always put her daughter first in her life. A beautiful story!