The Lost Wife, by Alyson Richman

"I know you from somewhere," Josef says to the woman he has just been introduced to at his grandson's wedding. Both Josef and Lenka - the bride's grandmother - are the young couple's last grandparent.

"You must be mistaken," Lenka replies, not wanting to appear rude, but wanting to concentrate on her granddaughter's wedding. However, the exchange continues for several minutes, letting the reader know that something almost magical is up, until the older couple finally realizes the truth: "'Lenka,it's me,' he said. 'Josef. Your husband.'"

So begins Alyson Richman's The Lost Wife. While the first two chapters, as well as the final chapters and epilogue are set in modern New York, the majority of the book is set in Europe during World War II. The novel introduces us to the young Lenka and Josef, both of whom live with their families. Josef is the older brother of one of Lenka's schoolmates. Against the backdrop of war and the Nazi march across Europe, Lenka and Josef fall in love, even as both families worry about whether to leave their homes. (Both families are Jewish, so staying a step or two ahead of the Nazis is a real concern.)

At one point, Josef's family is able to secure passage out of the country. He proposes to Lenka, with the understanding that since they will then be married, she will be able to accompany his family. Lenka is under the impression that her birth family may also be included in this escape. After the hurried wedding and very brief honeymoon, Lenka discovers that her family can't come right away with her new husband's family, and she opts to stay, with the understanding that she will meet up with Josef and his family once they are safely settled. However, the boat that Josef's family is on sinks; the reports state that the entire family are among the missing and presumed dead.

Shortly afterwards, Lenka and her family are rounded up with other local Jews and sent to concentration camps. While most of her family perishes, Lenka manages to survive the torments of the camps, even after ending up at Auschwitz.

When the prisoners at Auschwitz are liberated, Lenka is still alive. One of the American soldiers, Carl, takes her under his wing, falling in love with her. Lenka, who still believes that she is widowed, eventually marries Carl, who brings her to the United States. While she feels affection and gratitude towards Carl, it is not the same passionate love she had with Josef.

Meanwhile, Josef has made it to the United States, having survived the boat wreck that killed the rest of his family. He, too, remarries, believing that Lenka has died in the camps.

The last few chapters fast forward from the horrors of WWII to the present, where both Lenka and Josef are waiting for their grandchildren to marry, unaware of the surprise awaiting them at the wedding.

The backdrop of this book has the potential to depress the reader, and in many ways, it is heart wrenching when one realizes that while this is a novel, the reality of The Lost Wife was played out in millions of lives. In fact, many entire families were snuffed out in the concentration camps of WWII. But the story of these two people who loved each other and who thought for the majority of their lives that the other was dead, only to discover each other during the wedding of their grandchildren, is a beautiful story that will take the reader along time and again.

Will Love for Crumbs, by Jonna Ivin

Will Love For Crumbs by Jonna Ivin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Will Love For Crumbs, by Jonna Ivin is an interesting memoir of a woman whose life was anything but easy. Raised by an alcoholic mother (her father disappeared when she was young), Ivin and a boyfriend get a house so that they can care for her now aging mother. However, when her mother dies, Ivin and her boyfriend split up.

Ivin becomes a volunteer with the Red Cross, helping to clean up an area hit by a hurricane. It is while doing this that she meets Chris, a charming man with more stories than substance. Ivin and Chris soon become involved. At first, she feels that he is the love of her life; it soon becomes apparent that he is the man she should have run from.

Compelling and, at times, almost frightening, the reader roots for Ivin, hoping she will become strong enough to leave. Does she? Read and find out...

The only real down side to this book is that it ends too abruptly. If one is looking for a happily-ever-after book, the ending might disappoint, in that we don't know whether she ever finds Mr. Right. But then, this is real life.

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River of Hidden Dreams, by Connie May Fowler

River of Hidden Dreams by Connie May Fowler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some writers have a knack of weaving a story that draws a reader in so seamlessly that it's difficult to put the book down. That is what Connie May Fowler did with River of Hidden Dreams. Her second novel, published in 1994, River of Hidden Dreams is the story of Sadie Hunter, a forty-something woman whose past haunts her, keeping her captive, even as she keeps Carlos, her passionate Cuban lover, at arm's length.

As a child, Sadie lived on the boat that her Mulatto grandfather built with her mother and Cherokee grandmother. Years after her women die, dancing, during a storm, Sadie is back living on the boat, giving tourists rides while spinning stories of her history. Even as she is afraid to let anyone close, fearing another unbearable loss, Carlos, a man who has experienced his own heartache, loves her, helping her to finally face her demons in order to heal.

Weaving Sadie's voice with those of her mother and grandparents into a beauty story, River of Hidden Dreams is a story that will haunt the reader well after the book is finished.

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Wild: From Lost To Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Many of us have, at one time or another, wondered what we would do if we had several months of free time. I had thought it might be interesting to walk the Appalacian Trail; Cheryl Strayed decided, instead, to walk the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which she chronicled in her memori Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

In her early twenties, Strayed went through a rough several years: the death of her mother to a recently diagnosed cancer, the slow drifting away from her step-father and siblings, and the end of her first marriage. Needing to get away and find her center, Strayed decided to hike the PCT, a feat made even more remarkable when one considers that she had not hiked any distance prior to starting out.

Wild is, for the most part, an intense, quick read. The beginning of the book describes her mother's relatively sudden death after an advanced cancer diagnosis and how Strayed cares for her mother is slightly reminiscent of parts of Anna Quindlen's novel One True Thing. While this section seemed to drag a little, as well as the break-up of Strayed's marriage, both sections are needed to help the reader understand her state of mind and why she felt the need to get out and hike the PCT. Her descriptions of the trail, the people she meets along the trail - who are somewhat few and far between and predominantly men - and the sense of peace the hike gave her make the book an interesting read.

There were only a few places in the book that, I felt, Strayed could have condensed. One place was when she and her brothers had to put down her late mother's old, sick horse, Lady. It was obviously quite traumatic for Strayed. However, she goes into way more detail of the horse's death than is necessary. Also, near the end of the book, she met up with a man working at a bar who she got to know very intimately during the few days they were together. That section, too, could have been condenses; suffice it to say that what she's written of the encounter would have made a fantastic erotic short story. Then there's the heroin experimentation. Those three sections - or, rather, the elaboration in those three sections - make Wild questionable for very young or very sensitive readers.

This is not to say that the book should be ignored. It is, for the most part, a truly amazing memoir, one that should be read more than once.

View all my reviews Note: To read my review about two books on hiking the Appalacian Trail, click here. There, you'll read aboutAWOL On The APpalachian Trail, by David Miller, and Dennis Blanchard's Three Hundred Zeros.

Kidowed, by Jessica Kenley

Kidowed by Jessica Kenley


What would you do if you outlived your children? How would this affect you? In Kidowed, Jessica Kenley tells how the death of her two children to a rare genetic disease affected her.

Kenley had planned to divorce her husband of two years when she discovers she's pregnant with their son. After Ethan's birth, Kenley learns that her son has epidermolysis bullosa, a disease that affects his skin. According to www.debra.org, approximately 200 children a year are born with e.b.; the disease can range anywhere from mild to extremely severe. Ethan dies from the disease. Not long afterwards, Kenley becomes pregnant with her daughter, Kaylee, who also dies from e.b.

The first half of the book deals mainly with Kayley's life and death, both singly as in comparison to Ethan's life with the disease, while the second half deals with how Kenley copes with the after-effects of her children's deaths.

Jessica Kenley's family and her sense of humor both help her through the dark days of dealing with her children's illness and the after-effects where she tries getting her life back together. Early on, Kenley writes, "I got married. Two years later, right after we had decided to get a divorce, I found out I was pregnant. Whoops." She and her husband, "who we'll refer to as 'Bobo the sperm guy,'" split up the month before Ethan is born. (She also writes that Joy, her therapist, has told her that "anger is my biggest issue. Who knew?") She also gives most people nicknames, rather than their real names, such as Bobo (her ex-), her friend "Nice," and her Aunt "Sweetheart."

When Kaylee dies, half-way through the book, the reader is left to wonder how Kenley can fill another half a book without her children. While she writes how she falls apart on various levels, and how she attempts to cope, Kenley could have drastically shortened the second half of the book. It was almost as though there were two books - before the deaths, and after them. However, there were several places in the second half that I had to scan to keep from putting the book down completely, places where Kenley could have drastically condensed what she was going through in an effort to assuage the pain of her children's deaths.

In the end, though, Kenley writes a sympathetic memoir about the pain of her children's death.

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Evolving Toward Peace: Awakening the Global Heart, by Jalaja Bonheim

Most of us want to find some semblance of peace in our lives, a way to shut up the chattering voice of doubt, anger and/or dissonance in our lives. In Evolving Toward Peace: Awakening the Global Heart, Jalaja Bonheim attempts to lead us toward gaining that peace, while building toward "a peaceful global community" (from the back cover).

While the book's introduction is a little long, it helps give the reader some background on where Bonheim is coming from, both physically and emotionally. My main concern with the intro came from its New Age-y feel, which almost made me put the book down. Bonheim also introduces us here to her idea of "circlework," in which people gather in circles to strengthen their "capacity for heart-thinking." This circlework is her method of helping people find peace.

Near the end of the intro, Bonheim writes, "...Together, we can move...from violence to peace" (page 23). She also recommends that the reader "not try to absorb whole chapters in a single gulp." I found this to be good advice, as it is too easy to become overwhelmed. Much of what is written in Evolving Toward Peace seemed repetitive, making the reader possibly want to skip over sections while missing some of what Bonheim has written.

The body of the book is broken down into four main parts, each with several chapters to read through. Each chapter is filled with anecdotes from Bonheim's observations, as well as quotes from a wide variety of people, places, books and points of view to help drive home the point that each chapter is trying to teach. The chapters then end with several exercises for the reader to do, and which are described fully in Appendix II.

In the end, while much of what Evolving Toward Peace: Awakening the Global Heart has to offer is relevant to helping better one's self, the idea of a "global movement" may be a difficult undertaking with one book, and the New Age-feel may be a turn-off to many of those Bonheim is trying to reach. That said, I would advise a potential reader to check out a copy, as there are portions that, even among skeptics, can help one's understanding of one's self.

Disclaimer: I received this book as part of Goodreads' giveaway program. (Thank you!)

Fox Tracks: A Novel, by Rita Mae Brown

Fox Tracks: A Novel by Rita Mae Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I received Fox Tracks: A Novel, by Rita Mae Brown from Goodreads' Giveaway program.

There's an adage that a writer should write what he or she knows. Rita Mae Brown has taken that advice to heart. In her latest "Sister" Jane novel, Fox Tracks, Brown has Sister Jane still living in Albermarle County, Virginia, and reigning over the local hunt club. An equestrian who lives in Virginia and who rides with a hunt club, Ms. Brown has many of her books firmly set in Virginia, with characters noted for their strength and indepence. Brown's Miss Murphy mysteries - my first foray into Ms. Brown's writings - also take place in Virginia, as do many of her non-series books.

In Fox Tracks, Sister Jane and members of her hunt club gather with other hunt clubs for their annual event in Manhattan. The festive mood, however, is dampened with the murder of a local tobacco shop owner. Later, another murder takes place in Boston. Of course, this is not the end of the trail of murders. Even the beloved Sister Jane becomes a target, hunted with more zeal than a hunt club hound chases a fox. Does she smoke out the killer or killers before she becomes a victim? Read this quickly moving book to find out.

There are a few things that bothered me with Fox Tracks, all of which are relatively minor. There are times when Ms. Brown's wording seems a little stilted, with a slightly strange syntax. On page 17 of Fox Tracks, Ms. Brown writes, "Hailing from Lexington, Kentucky, where she was Master of the Woodford Hunt, Jane Winegardner walked across the ballroom straight toward Sister,..." It would have made more sense if "Jane Winegardner, the Master of the Woodford Hunt in Lexington, Kentucky, walked across the ballroom..." Meanwhile, on page 18, we learn that Jane "wave[d] at Lynn Lloyd, MFH, from Red Rock in Nevada." Adding the MFH seems to slow down the flow of the words a little. There are several other places where the writing is a little off, but not so much to where the reader would want to walk away from the book.

One thing that Brown does that I have found helpful, both in the Miss Murphy books, as well as Fox Tracks, is the habit of giving a list of characters at the beginning of the book. For a new reader in either the Sister Jane or Miss Murphy series, it helps to know who the characters are we'll encounter along the way. Readers who have followed each series from the start will be able to get a quick idea of how far the characters have come from the previous book, as well as any new characters who might either be a new permanent addition, or simply here for the current book.

Despite the slight quirks in Ms. Brown's writing, Fox Tracks is as enjoyable as other Rita Mae Brown novels and worth the read. Fans will thoroughly enjoy this book, and first time readers may become fans after this novel.

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