Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand is set on Nantucket Island, and tells the story of the peole who live there year round, not just the summer vacationers. The story focuses on a group of high school teenagers from three different families, and a devastating car crash that happens on graduation night. This is the very real story about how these kids and their parents deal with such great loss. Hilderbrand writes from many different viewpoints and it works. Her characters are…
Every once in a while I read a book that is so beautifully written it actually brings me to tears. Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins is such a book. This is the story of Fos and Opal, who fall in love after WWI, under the stars of the Perseid meteor shower. Fos is a true believer in science, studying anything that lights up. Opal has her own kind of down home brilliance, and they couldn’t be more in…
Letter to My Daughter is a little book of essays by Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou is one of my favorite writers, and if you don’t know who she is, you should. Start with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and go from there. This recent offering is written to all her daughters everywhere. It contains little nuggets of wisdom attained throughout her amazing life. The essays are direct, witty, sassy, strong and full of love. Nothing life changing here,…
The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey is an impressive retelling of Jane Eyre, set in 1960’s Scotland. Young Gemma Hardy is taken from her native Iceland when her parents die, and taken in by her kind Uncle in Scotland. When he dies, she finds herself living with her Aunt and cousins who don’t want her there anymore. She is sent off to boarding school as a working girl even though she is only 10 years old, and from…
Come in and Cover Me by Gin Phillips is a novel about an archeologist named Ren who is 37 years old and has been living with the ghost of her brother since he died in a car accident when she was 12. The novel takes Ren into the canyons of New Mexico where she unearths pottery sherds and begins to see even more ghosts of the women who lived in the canyon thousands of years earlier. Ren falls in love…
Encountering the Self is a little book by Swiss Waldorf teacher Hermann Koepke, that is based on the teachings of Rudolph Steiner, and addresses what he refers to as the nine year change. I have mentioned Steiner often in this blog and his teachings continue to inform my life. This book deals with the change a child goes through in their 9th year, as they are experiencing themselves for the first time as truly separate individuals, different from everyone around…
The Garden of Happy Endings by Barbara O’Neal tells the story of Reverend Elsa Montgomery of the Unity Church. After a shocking tragedy shatters her community in Seattle, Elsa loses her faith and retreats to her hometown of Pueblo, Colorado where she tries to recover by working in a soup kitchen and starting a community garden. She is also reunited with her best friend and former fiancee, who is now a Catholic priest. This book delves deeply into the issues…
Drawing on decades of experience as a teacher, performer and therapist, Cynthia Hoven brings the world of Eurythmy alive in her new book Eurythmy, Movements and Meditations-A Journey to the Heart of Language. Eurythmy is a movement art created by Rudolph Steiner in the early 1900’s in which the sounds of language become visible through movement and gesture. Eurythmy is most often done as an accompaniment to music or poetry and has been known to have healing effects on millions…
Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors. I was surprised to see that she had written a book about Zorro, but also curious. In her hands his story is reborn, as Allende imagines the early life of Diego de la Vega, before he becomes Zorro. Allende is a master storyteller, and she takes us into the world of late 18th/early 19th century California, populated by Indians and Spaniards.Young Diego is a product of this world with an Indian mother…
Wonderstruck is the new novel by Hugo Cabret author Brian Selznick. It is a novel in words and pictures, for young and old alike. My daughter insisted I read it after she finished it. There is one story happening in fabulously detailed black and white drawings and another in words. By the end, the two converge. It is an exploration into Deaf culture, family, museums, and much more, all beautifully woven together by a master storyteller. Selznick’s novel soars.