The Secret History by Donna Tartt

About a month ago I decided to re-start posting to my blog. I knew I wanted to start with this book.  I read her book The Goldfinch sometime in the last year and was blown away (it did win the Pulitzer Prize).  Immediately after I finished it I put her other two books on my paperbackswap.com wish list.  I quickly received The Little Friend and while I thought it was very good, it wasn’t quite at The Goldfinch level. 

I’m one of those people which looks at every list of books I come across, just to make sure I’m not missing something wonderful.  Every time I saw a list of the top books of the last century, The Secret History was on it. Ok, I’m getting more and more eager to read it. I finally received it a few weeks ago. I was flummoxed that it was a “mass-market paperback” (you know…the kind you can buy in the grocery store).  I was under the impression that nothing worth reading could be found between the covers of a mass-market paperback!  (Ok, that statement is probably about a 3 on the sarcasm meter, but I will admit that I am a bit of a book snob!)  I decided to read it anyway, all those lists could not be that wrong.

Book synopsis from back cover of the book:  “Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life—in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable.

Yet as Richard was accepted and drawn into their inner circle, he learned a terrifying secret that bound them to one another…a secret about an incident in the woods in the dead of night where an ancient rite was brought to brutal life…and led to a gruesome death. And that was just the beginning…”

This is not really a “whodunit”, we know who from the beginning, but a “whydunit”. It is thoroughly gripping and lyrical.  The characters are believable and enchanting. It is interesting to me that all the main characters come from a somewhat dysfunctional family, but then again, maybe they needed that in order to believe that they did what they did.  So many questions! Someone read this book so I can discuss it with you!

Mormon Mention: At one point two of the main characters go far into town where the locals are not used to the students showing up there.  They two young men (dressed in suits and ties) are sitting at the bar drinking some kind of alcohol when the waitress mistakes them for Mormon missionaries and comments on them drinking, saying something like, “Huh, they let you guys drink now? I thought you couldn’t even drink coffee.”

Cross Currents by John Shors

Thailand's pristine Ko Phi Phi island attracts tourists from around the world. There, struggling to make ends meet, small-resort owners Lek and Sarai are happy to give an American named Patch room and board in exchange for his help. But when Patch's brother, Ryan, arrives, accompanied by his girlfriend, Brooke, Lek learns that Patch is running from the law, and his presence puts Lek's family at risk. Meanwhile, Brooke begins to doubt her love for Ryan while her feelings for Patch blossom.

In a landscape where nature's bounty seems endless, these two families are swept up in an approaching cataclysm that will require all their strength of heart and soul to survive. 

John Shors, brilliant author that he is, tells us at the beginning of this novel that it is about the 2004 “Christmas Tsunami” which devastated parts of Indonesia and this little Island off Thailand.  Two waves hit Ko Phi Phi, and met in the middle of the island pulling buildings and people out to sea, killing nearly one-third of the population of the Island. 

I read this book in almost one sitting. As you read and become invested in these people, in the back of your mind you know the tsunami is coming and you wonder who will survive.  You can’t stand the thoughts of losing any of these wonderful people, but you have to keep reading to find out what happens.  You can’t help love Lek and Sarai and their children and Patch, the American.  This is one not to be missed.

5 stars (PG-13 Brief sex scenes)

The Olive Farm by Carol Drinkwater

Carol Drinkwater is the British actress who played Helen in the BBC series “All Creatures Great and Small”.  This book is her story.  She fell in love with a French man, Michel, and they bought an olive farm in the south of France. 

The farm is situated in the foothills just outside of Cannes, were I spent a few months during my mission. Because of this, my review of this book may be a little prejudiced to area.  Needless to say, she has a wonderful, entertaining voice. Their tale of scraping together the money to buy this place, swimming through the paperwork of the French bureaucracy, finding honest workers to help them, dealing with the slow-paced life in Provence is delightful and enjoyable to read.  She tells their story with wit and enthusiasm.

Her descriptions of the island of Ste. Marguerite (just off the coast of Cannes) almost brought me to tears as I spent a magical day there myself. Even her images of the city of Cannes were delightful and invoked many memories. 

I believe anyone would love this book, but it was extra special to me.

5 Stars (Rated PG, she writes her cuss words as sh**, loved it!)

Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

A devoted city dweller, Cornelia Brown surprised no one more than herself when she was gripped by the sudden, inescapable desire to leave urban life behind and head for an idyllic suburb. Though she knows she and her beloved husband, Teo, have made the right move, she approaches her new life with trepidation and struggles to forge friendships in her new home. Cornelia's mettle is quickly tested by judgmental neighbor Piper Truitt. Perfectly manicured, impeccably dressed, and possessing impossible standards, Piper is the embodiment of everything Cornelia feared she would find in suburbia. A saving grace soon appears in the form of Lake. Over a shared love of literature and old movies, Cornelia develops an instant bond with this warm yet elusive woman who has also recently arrived in town, ostensibly to send her perceptive and brilliant son, Dev, to a school for the gifted.

Marisa de los Santos is a genius in developing characters which we love and cheer for.  The story is told in the voices of Cornelia, Piper and Dev and by the end of the book you feel that they have become your close friend and you are truly rooting for them. She portrays what is means to "belong" to another person. The book is gripping…I dare you to read 50 pages and then be able to walk away and leave it.

5 Stars (Rated PG-13 for brief sex and language)

Dragon House by John Shors

Iris Rhodes is a successful book review living in Chicago when she decides to give it all up to complete her father’s dream. Her seemingly distant father had been a soldier in the Vietnam War and went back to open a center for street children in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and was not able to complete it before his death.  At the pleading of his mother, Iris invites Noah, a man she remembers from childhood and a wounded Iraq war veteran to go with her.

Iris and Noah face their own demons and try to heal their wounds amid the innocence and beauty, the corruption and chaos of Vietnam.  Inspired by the street children she meets Iris walks in the footsteps of her father, a man whom Vietnam both shattered and saved.  Meanwhile, Noah slowly rediscovers himself by opening up to the love of others.

John Shors is a master storyteller. His prose are lyrical and bright, his characters well-developed and his plots engaging and exciting.  He writes about love and emotions as well as he writes action and adventure.  This book is a wonderful tale of redemption and the resilience of the human spirit.

 
5 Stars (Rated PG-13 for some violence)

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920’s by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough

None of Cornelia Otis Skinner's many accomplishments as actress or author came close to matching the phenomenal popularity of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, which appeared in 1942 and went through more than twenty printings a total of more than two million copies. A collaboration with her former Bryn Mawr classmate Emily Kimbrough, the memoir charmingly and quite comically details the pair's youthful trip abroad two decades earlier, when they were almost out of their teens and on their own for the first time. From its very beginning, the flavor of the work is deliciously evident, as Emily surprises a naked man in his hotel room before the girls have even embarked. From Montreal to London to Paris, episode follows upon episode, absurdity upon absurdity: shipwreck in the Saint Lawrence River, an astonishingly funny game of deck tennis, Emily hitting a drowning man with a deck chair, Cornelia breaking out with the measles, both girls oblivious to the ill repute of the house in Dieppe where they found lodging one night with sightseeing and romantic yearnings coming in between.

This nostalgic and innocent book is a marvelous voyage, so bright with life and comedy and an air of happy coincidence that it's very hard to put down, and nearly impossible to forget.  DELIGHTFUL!!!

5 Stars (Rated G)

The Lawgiver by Herman Wouk

I am a longtime lover of Herman Wouk’s books. Who didn’t love the sweeping saga of “The Winds of War”, “War and Remembrance” and “The Caine Mutiny” or the charm of “Marjorie Morningstar”?  So last week, when browsing at Barnes and Noble, I saw the name Herman Wouk, opened the cover to read the flap, and saw the name “Moses” I knew I had to read this book.

Mr. Wouk states that he always wanted to write a book about Moses, but it wasn’t until his 97^th year (last year) that he decided to write a book about how hard it was to write a book about Moses.  This is an epistolary novel containing email, memos, text messages and Skypes of a group of people making a movie about Moses.  The producer will not fund the movie without Mr. Wouk approving the screenplay.  So Mr. Wouk is a character in his own book (or a fictionalized version of himself).

It was an entertaining read.  I did like the way they spoke about Moses.  I certainly think they (or Mr. Wouk) had a better understanding of who Moses was than DeMille did.  I also loved the relationship between Mr. Wouk and his wife of 63 years.  I don’t think that part was fictionalized.

I am giving this book 5 stars, because of who the author is and the fact that he wrote it at 97.  Gotta applaud that!  

5 Stars (Rated PG)

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Divakaruni

Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. A punky teenager with an unexpected gift. An upper-class Caucasian couple whose relationship is disintegrating. A young Muslim-American man struggling with the fallout of 9/11. A graduate student haunted by a question about love. An African-American ex-soldier searching for redemption. A Chinese grandmother with a secret past. And two visa office workers on the verge of an adulterous affair.

When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There's little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, "one amazing thing" from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself.

When I first finished the book I was confused and a bit angry at the way the book ended, but as I considered what the message of the book was, I saw that it ended the only way it could.  Brilliant!  I loved all the stories from the different characters.  I read in the author’s notes at the end of the book that one of the books that inspired her in the writing of this book was ‘Bel Canto’. I found this very interesting because at the beginning of this book I thought to myself that this book evoked the same feeling as ‘Bel Canto’.  If you read this book the let me know, because I would love to discuss it with someone.

5 Stars (Rated PG)

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly

Calpurnia Virginia Tate is eleven years old in 1899 when she wonders why the yellow grasshoppers in her Texas backyard are so much bigger than the green ones. With a little help from her notoriously cantankerous grandfather, an avid naturalist, she figures out that the green grasshoppers are easier to see against the yellow grass, so they are eaten before they can get any larger. As Callie explores the natural world around her, she develops a close relationship with her grandfather, navigates the dangers of living with six brothers, and comes up against just what it means to be a girl at the turn of the century.

Calpurnia Tate is as spirited a character as the indomitable Anne of Green Gables.  You will fall in love with her and cheer her along. 

5 stars (Rated G)

Beneath a Marble Sky by John Shors

Journey to dazzling seventeenth-century Hindustan (modern-day India), where the reigning emperor, consumed with grief over the tragic death of his beloved wife, commissioned the building of a grand mausoleum as a testament to the marvel of their love. This monument would soon become known as the Taj Mahal—a sight famous around the world for its beauty and the emotions it symbolizes.

Princess Jahanara, the courageous daughter of the emperor and his wife, recounts their mesmerizing tale, while sharing her own parallel story of forbidden love with the celebrated architect of the Taj Mahal. Set during a time of unimaginable wealth and power, murderous sibling rivalries, and cruel despotism, this impressive novel sweeps you away to a historical Hindustan brimming with action and intrigue in an era when, alongside the brutalities of war and oppression, architecture and the art of love and passion reached a pinnacle of perfection.

Fascinating historical fiction. I learned a lot about the Taj Mahal and the history of India that I did not know. The author, John Shors, also wrote “Beside the Burning Sea” which I read recently. I WILL be looking for more of his books to read. 

5 Stars (Rate PG-13, for mild sex and violence)

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman

Anne Fadiman is--by her own admission--the sort of person who learned about sex from her father's copy of Fanny Hill, whose husband buys her 19 pounds of dusty books for her birthday, and who once found herself poring over her roommate's 1974 Toyota Corolla manual because it was the only written material in the apartment that she had not read at least twice.

This witty collection of essays recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story.

What a delight…I tittered, snickered and laughed out loud.  When my husband asked what was so funny I shared with him.  Not being a reader, he didn’t see the humor.  Some of my favorite parts/quotes:

“To use an electronics analogy, closing a book on a bookmark is like pressing the Stop button, whereas when you leave a book facedown, you’ve only pressed Pause.”

“George Bernard Shaw once came across one of his books in a second-hand shop, inscribed To ________ with esteem, George Bernard Shaw. He bought the book, returned it to _________, adding the line, With renewed esteem. George Bernard Shaw.”

The whole chapter about plagiarism is hysterical. I especially enjoyed the parts about ‘anticipatory plagiarism’ (where someone plagiarizes you 100 years before you are born and the quote about Joe Biden and how he cannot NOT plagiarize.

5 Stars (Rated G)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

What fun this book is! I think it might be more fun as an adult than as a child!  It is the quintessential book for boys.  Every young man should read it.

I loved all the stories; it seemed to speed from one story to another.  From Tom convincing the other boys to pay him for the opportunity to paint the fence, to attending their own funeral, to pulling the wig off the schoolmaster, to his sweet relationship with Becky Thatcher, the reader is amused and entertained and swept along with Tom through a most enjoyable vision of a young man’s adventures.

I was filled with nostalgia for my childhood; while not as adventurous as Tom’s, it was nevertheless filled much outdoor exploration and imaginative play. I also felt bad for the youth of today whose lives are filled with video games and television that will never know this kind of enjoyment.

5 stars (Rated G)

Beside a Burning Sea by John Shors

It’s WWII and the US hospital ship Benevolence has just been bombed and torn in two.  Nurses (and sisters) Annie and Isabelle are helped out of the ship by an injured Japanese soldier Akira.  They swim to a nearby deserted island find themselves joined by six others from the ship, one of whom (unbeknownst to the others) is the traitor who informed Japan and caused the attack.

What ensues during the next eighteen days, as they learn to live on the island and plan for an inevitable invasion by the Japanese makes for a fast paced, engrossing read.  Shors is a master storyteller, penning breathless action scenes equally as well as incredible breath-taking romance.  The characters are authentic and endearing.  I find myself continuing to think of them even after finishing the book. There is something in this book for everyone.  I loved it.  And I must say a word about the gorgeous cover, somehow, having such a beautiful cover makes the book that much better.

I don’t hand out 5 stars easily, but this book earns every one of them.

5 stars (Rated PG-13 for mild sex and violence)

Life is So Good by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman

This book was published in 2001 when George Dawson was 103.  Born in 1898 to an extremely poor black family, Dawson tells the story of his life to Mr. Glaubman who does an excellent job of capturing his voice and personality.  As Dawson reflects on his life (he learns to read at the age of 98) he gives us a fascinating view of America in the twentieth century and bring to the forefront some quite interesting differences between his life and the life that most of us experience.  One that I particularly enjoyed was a point when Richard said some was as easy as learning to ride a bike to which George responds, “I rode a mule.”

George Dawson lends his bright outlook and incredible work ethics to this narrative.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and found George to be someone with whom I would enjoy talking.

5 stars (Rated G)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks was a 31 year-old black woman with five children.  She went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to be treated for “a knot in her womb”.  While being treated for cervical cancer (which treatment sounds almost barbaric to my 21^st century sensitivities) her doctor took samples of her cancer cells and gave them to the laboratory, which was common practice for the time. Whether anyone actually asked permission no one is sure.  By the time Henrietta passed away her cells were on their way to immortality.  The cancer cells grew at an alarming rate and the scientists at Johns Hopkins were able to easily keep the “HeLa” cells alive, which up to that time scientists had not been successful in keeping a cell strain going. 

Soon Johns Hopkins were sending samples of HeLa cells to anyone who asked for them and they became the basis for most of the medical research world-wide for quite some time.  There are still HeLa cells being used today.

Henrietta’s family was not aware of their loved one’s legacy to the medical field until in the 1970’s when they heard of it by chance.  Being mostly undereducated, it was difficult for them to understand the role their mother/wife played in medical research.  What they did understand was that some part of her lived on. When the researchers came asking for blood samples from her children, they complied thinking they were being tested for the same cancer from which their mother died. What they were really doing was trying to map Henrietta’s DNA, so they could use the cells for further studies.

Rebecca Skloot first heard of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells in a biology class when she was sixteen.  She became obsessed with this woman. She spent over ten years studying the medical journals and interviewing Henrietta’s family and medical professionals.  She writes at the beginning of the book, “This is a work of nonfiction. No names have been changed, no characters invented, no events fabricated.”  So when there is a conversation in the book, it is from the over 1,000 hours of interviews she conducted. And conversations are recorded in the dialect of the person speaking. 

The amazing thing about Ms. Skloot is that she makes this all so utterly fascinating. I could not put the book down.

5 stars (Rated PG – some graphic details)

Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas

During World War II, a family finds life turned upside down when the government opens a Japanese interment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes (and suspicions) turn to the newcomers, the interlopers, the strangers.

This is her town as Rennie Stroud has never seen it before. She has just turned thirteen and, until this time, life has pretty much been what her father told her it should be: predictable and fair. But now the winds of change are coming and with them, a shift in her perspective.  And Rennie will discover secrets that destroy even the most sacred things.

Part thriller, part historical novel, Tallgrass is a riveting exploration of the darkest—and best—parts of the human heart.

5 stars (Rate PG – could be read by an older teen)

The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman

Josef and Lenka meet and fall in love in Prague in the early days of WWII.  They quickly marry so Lenka can be added to Josef’s family in order to immigrate to the United States.  When the time comes to leave Lenka makes an agonizing decision not to go. 

The ship Josef’s family is on is hit by a torpedo and Lenka’s sees the list of those lost in the newspaper that mistakenly lists Josef’s entire family when Josef is alive and makes it to the United States. 

 
Lenka goes with her family to a Nazi ghetto of Terezin and eventually to Auschwitz.  After the war she is listed among those believed dead. 

The following is not a spoiler as it is told in the very first pages of the book.  They meet again at the marriage of Josef’s grandson and Lenka’s granddaughter.  The story of the book is the voyage both of their lives take in believing that their ‘one true love’ is dead.

The part of the book concerning the Holocaust was fascinating to me as it told stories I had not heard before. Lenka is an artist and she actually works as an artist in the camps.

I loved this book! I will admit that I am a fan of anything concerning the Jewish people; this book captured me and took me along with it.  I devoured the book.

5 stars (Rated PG-13 for mild sex talk and Holocaust horrors)

Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker

Let me first say that some of the charm of this book for me was not only that it was published in 1944 (during WWII), but that the copy I had in my hands actually dated from that time and included a note in the front stating “This book is manufactured under wartime conditions in conformity with all government regulations controlling the use of paper and other materials.”

Ellen Webb is a 18 year-old woman leaving her family’s dry-land wheat farm in Montana for the first time to attend college in Minneapolis.  When she returns at the end of the school year she begins to see her beloved farm, parents and town through different eyes.  She thinks that what she is seeing is the ‘truth’, but is it, or is it she that has changed.

 Some quotes from the book. This is about the end of harvest:

"like a quiet day after a whole week of wind. I mean that wind that blows dirt into your eyes and hair and between your teeth and roars in your ears after you've gone inside."

"I hadn't meant to fall in love so soon, but there's nothing you can do about it. It's like planning to seed in April and then having it come off so warm in March that the earth is ready."

“We get mad, sure! Like ice an' snow an' thunder an' lightning storm, but they don't hurt the wheat down in the ground any.”

“The words came so fast they seemed to roll down hill. Nobody ever calls it all that; it's just spring wheat, but I like the words. They heap up and make a picture of a spring that's slow to come, when the ground stays frozen late into March and the air is raw, and the skies are sulky and dark”

It is a lovely story of learning that one’s parents are human, of having one’s heart broken, of other’s judgments and being disappointed with what life has to hand to you but making the best of it.  And the symbolism of the winter wheat!  Sigh!  eautiful!

 

Loved it!  A must read!

5 stars (Rated PG – just a few adult-ish situations)

True Sisters by Sandra Dallas

I love Sandra Dallas and when I heard she was writing a story of women in the Martin Handcart Company, you can be sure I preordered it!  I was eager to read this telling of Mormon pioneers written by a non-LDS (Mormon) author.

“True Sisters” takes place several years after the initial Mormon migration to Salt Lake City, led by the prophet Brigham Young.  Missionaries were in Europe converting thousands of new members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  The Saints were then encouraged to migrate to Utah or “Zion”.  Many of these people were poor and could not afford the $300 to outfit a covered wagon so the Church initiated the idea of the ‘handcarts’.  The handcarts were basically large wheelbarrows.  Each person was only allowed 17 lbs. of possessions to take with them.  Each family would push and pull the handcart and walk the 1,300 miles to Salt Lake City. 

Thousands of Saints used this method to migrate to Utah with few problems, but in 1856 one group started too late in the season and ran into dire consequences. Due to a miscommunication in Salt Lake, supplies were not waiting where they were expected and the dire consequences turned deadly.

This book is about four women in the group.  Nannie, who is travelling with her sister and brother-in-law after being abandoned on her wedding day; Louisa, who’s married to the over-bearing leader of the group; Jessie, who’s travelling with her brothers, each of them dreaming of the farm they will have in Zion; and Anne, who hasn’t converted to the Mormon faith but who has no choice but to follow her husband since he sold everything to make the trek to Utah.

You will love these women as they struggle with hardships we cannot even imagine.  They learn to depend on each other as they serve each other along the arduous trip.  Some of the men in the book will make you angry.  They are pompous, overbearing and not as sensitive as we modern have come to expect our men to be. Those of us who are LDS would not expect the men of our Church to act that way today, but I think that, in general, men were more domineering in those days.

Ms. Dallas does an excellent job of portraying doctrine and the feelings of the LDS people.  As a member of that church I would like to make a few comments about some of the things mentioned in the book.  Tea, coffee and alcohol are not used by faithful members of the Church today.  “Celestial Marriage” in the book was a reference to polygamous marriage only.  Today a ‘celestial marriage’ refers to a marriage occurring in the temple where husband and wife are sealed for ‘time and all eternity’.

The book does mention that the prophet Brigham Young, upon learning of the plight of saints stranded in the snow out on the plains, abruptly ended the meeting telling the gathered members they needed to go help them….now.  His actual words to the church members at the meeting were that their own salvation depended on their going to rescue the Saints of the handcart company. 

Many wonder how the stranded Saints felt about the LDS Church after making it to the valley.  There is an account of many years later a group of Mormons were gathered and were discussing the foolishness of the leaders in letting the company start out so late.  This discussion went on for quite some time and was getting very disparaging toward the leaders of the group. An older man in the back of the room stood up and told them to stop the discussion.  He was Francis Webster and had been a member of the Martin Company.  He stated that not one of the members of that ill-fated group ever fell away from the Church.  He said, “Everyone of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives for we became acquainted with him in our extremities [greatest suffering].”

An absolute must-read book!

5 Stars (Rated PG for gruesome details)

Heaven Is Here: An Incredible Story of Hope, Triumph, and Everyday Joy by Stephanie Neilson

Stephanie Neilson had a perfect life.  She was raised in a large, loving family.  She married her ideal man at a young age and promptly had four beautiful children.  Her life was exactly as she dreamed it would be.  She wrote and published pictures of her idyllic life on one of the original “Mormon Mommy Blogs” The Nienie Dialogues. 

One day in August 2008, she and her husband Christian were in a near fatal airplane crash (the one other man in the plane did die).  Christian was burned over 20% of his body and had a broken back.  Stephanie was burned over 80% of her body.  She was in a medically induced coma for 3 months. 

This book is her story.  It is one of devout faith, devastating injuries, great hope and true love.  She details her memories of the accident and how she escaped the airplane with help from the other side of the veil.  She tells of waking up in the hospital with, initially, no memory of what happened and her horror of coming to grips with what happened to her and what that meant to her and her precious children (who were being cared for by her sisters). She explains the excruciating details of what her body had to go through to heal. She shares with the reader her underlying, undoubting, unshakeable faith in her Father in Heaven and how He helped her through this terrifying time.

There were passages that made me weep, but overall she taught me about extraordinary courage and faith.

5 Stars (Rated PG for disturbing description of the accident and injuries)