Category Archives: Books

Review and Giveaway: Chasing Shadows

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Chasing Shadows by Lynn Austin

In Chasing Shadows, a novel by Lynn Austin, people of the Netherlands thought they would be safe during WW2 because their country was neutral. But the Nazis invaded and took over anyway.

Lena de Vries is a farmer’s wife with a son and two daughters. She loves her life, though she has frequent arguments with her daughter, Ans.

Ans doesn’t care for farm life and doesn’t embrace her family’s faith. When she has an opportunity to move to Leiden, she takes it. She’s offered a job as a companion to a woman named Eloise with “melancholia”–her symptoms sound like what we would call bipolar disorder today. Eloise is depressed by her losses during WW1. When the Nazis invade, she’s in danger of sinking further. Ans starts helping in small, but ever-increasing ways with the Resistance. When Eloise finds ways she can help, too, she’s energized.

Ans had begun dating a Dutch policeman, Erik. The Nazis took over the police force, but Erik thought the best way to cope was just to get along with them. But they increasingly require more and more, and he and Ans differ about where they should draw the line.

Jewess Miriam Jacobs fled Germany with her father, who procured a teaching position in Leiden. They planned to send for Miriam’s mother later. But when the Nazis came, there was nowhere to escape. The coastline and borders were monitored. Some Jews who had escaped to other countries were turned away. One by one, the Nazis followed the same procedures as they had in Germany: limiting Jewish activity, requiring yellow stars on their clothing, eliminating their positions. When word came that Jews were being deported to settlement camps, Miriam and her father know they have to hide.

Meanwhile, Lena has to learn to let go—first of Ans when she leaves, then her husband Pieter when he trains for fighting, then her teenage son when the Nazis scoop up young men to build trenches and such. She and her husband hide both Jews and Dutch police who went underground rather than work for the Nazis. Though their food supply continues to dwindle, Lena can’t turn away the hungry that come to her farm.

I loved that this book didn’t cover just one thread–the Jewish persecution or the dangers of being in the Resistance or strains on the homefront—but dealt with facets of all of them. It was fully orbed, covering how the war affected and caused suffering for everyone. For instance, when the queen, in exile, orders railroad workers to strike, deportations of the Jews cease and Nazi supplies are stopped–but so are everyone else’s. There was widespread starving, especially in cities. People who had homes chopped up furniture to burn to keep warm, and animals of any kind (including cats and horses) weren’t safe from being caught and eaten.

Plus the three main characters are at different stages in life and at different levels in their faith. And each has to make nearly impossible choices.

I was so attached to these characters that I was sad to let them go when the story was over.

As it happens, I somehow ended up with two copies of this book. I think I bought it on sale but maybe forgot I had already received it for my birthday. Then the audiobook (nicely read by Stina Nielsen) came up free in the Audible “Plus” catalog, and I figured I’d get to it sooner via audio. But I still liked having the print books to refer to certain passages and read the book’s back material.

So I’d like to offer these two paperback books to a couple of my readers. I’m sorry I’ll have to restrict the giveaway to continental US addresses due to postage prices. If you’d like to enter a drawing for a copy of this book, leave a comment on this post. I’ll count all the comments on this post as entries unless you tell me you’d rather not be in the drawing. I’ll draw two names one week from today and contact the winners via email. If I can’t reach you or don’t hear back from you within a couple of days after that, I’ll draw another name.

I wish I could give you all a copy!

The giveaway is closed. Congratulations to Kitty and Sarah!

Writing Pet Peeves

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Pet peeves in writing

I mentioned a writing pet peeve in a recent book review, and some were curious about it. I have more than one. 🙂 So I thought I’d share them and see if others thought the same as I do.

Let me say first that I am an avid reader and love books and authors. I have great respect for authors, especially while trying to become one myself and seeing what’s involved.

I know writing is hard work. Plus we’re only human, and typos and grammar errors and other mistakes will filter through no matter how many people edit a manuscript.

But I share these in the hopes that any author who sees them will take them as constructive and not nit-picky criticism. I’m avoiding grammar and punctuation issues because there are tons of articles about those.

Conversations left hanging. Character A asks a question, and before Character B answers, the author fills in a lot of description, explanation, or backstory. A sentence or two is fine, but sometimes it feels the characters are just standing there in awkward silence waiting for the narrator to finish. In the book review I mentioned, the character wasn’t conversing but was asked to step up and give her presentation. Then there were seven paragraphs, partly backstory, partly description of the room and people, before the character spoke. The point of view was from this character, so it felt like her audience was just waiting and watching while all these thoughts ran through her mind before she spoke.

Characters with similar names. One book I read had a Kari and a Kali–a difference of only one letter. In another (from one of my favorite authors), two characters had two-syllable names that started with “Sh” or “Sch” and ended with “field.” One was a good guy and one was a bad guy. I had to keep going back to the first few chapters to remind myself which was which.

Describing multiple reactions at once. Sometimes I’ll see a character’s reaction or expressions with multiple adjectives: for example, “Her pale blue eyes reflected sorrow, grace, and fear.” First, this seems like telling, not showing. Second, how does anyone show that all at once? I could understand surprise turning to fear or something like that, but not several different emotions simultaneously.

Foreign phrases without translation, even common Latin ones. Sometimes you can get the gist of what is meant by the context, but it still takes the reader out of the story if they have to puzzle over an unfamiliar phrase. It does help that you can highlight a word or phrase in the Kindle app and get the translation. But that still takes the reader out of the narrative for a bit.

Overly technical terms. I was very disappointed in a recent article about counseling which used words like “vivify.” We’re often told in writing instruction not to use words the average person wouldn’t know. I got dinged on a manuscript critique for writing “in the midst” and “portend.” I was told, “You wouldn’t say, ‘I was in the midst of. . . ‘” But I say that all the time. This can be a little difficult because a word we think is common might be unfamiliar to others. But generally we need to consider the audience and avoid academic or technical terms (except, perhaps, in science fiction where the term is going to be explained).

Overused plot devices. It’s okay if a character learns vital information by eavesdropping on a conversation, but that shouldn’t happen repeatedly in the same story.

Overused plots. I’ve read that there are only a handful of storylines, and all the books written reuse them in different ways. That may be true. But it seems that a lot of books will have the same basic plot at one time. Lately I’ve seen a lot of books where the main female character has to go back to her hometown or estranged family for some reason (usually the illness or death of a parent) and encounters the boyfriend she left behind.

Giving modern sensibilities to historical characters. It took hundreds of years for society to come to certain understandings.

Modern phrases or slang in historical fiction. I know many historical fiction writers who diligently research language usage in their time period, so there are sources to check for that kind of thing.

Inaccuracy in spiritual truths. One author fussed with me when I said in a review that her book was inaccurate in its partial sharing of the gospel. She dismissed sharing the whole gospel in a book because, she said, one would have to write at a fifth grade level to do so. I’ve read a lot of Christian fiction over the last 40+ years, and I’ve seen the gospel explained in a tasteful and natural way. That’s supposed to be part of the Christian life, so it’s not being “preachy” to explain the gospel.

I agree that not every Christian book calls for a full gospel presentation. It depends on the type of story and characters and the author’s purpose. A Christian story doesn’t require that someone become a Christian during the plot. Often it’s the Christian characters who need to learn or grow in the story. But what is there concerning the gospel or any other spiritual truth should be accurate and not misleading. I go into this more in The Gospel and Christian Fiction.

Probably the inaccuracy I see most is when Christian characters urge a non-Christian to just start praying or doing Christian things, as if they’ll eventually become a Christian that way.

Older books re-released under new titles. It’s maddening when you buy a new book from a favorite author only to realize you read it a long time ago under a different title.

How about you? Do you share any of these pet peeves or do you have others? I’d love to hear them, but please frame them constructively and kindly. Also, I’d like to avoid grammar and punctuation issues in this discussion.

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Review: Aftermath

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Aftermath, a suspense novel by Terri Blackstock

Terri Blackstock’s novel, Aftermath, opens with three young women at their favorite band’s concert. As the Libertarian political candidate the band was opening for came to the podium, an explosion rocked the stage area. Only one of the girls, Taylor, makes it out alive.

Just minutes after the explosion, policemen pull aside Dustin Webb’s car. They ask to search his trunk, and, having nothing to hide, he agrees. He’s shocked to see plastics for explosives in his trunk. He insists he doesn’t know how they got there and he didn’t put them there. The officers don’t believe him. They got an anonymous tip that he was the bomber, he worked with bombs in the Army, and his security company had a client which had explosives stolen from them. Everything adds up to Dustin being involved in the bombing.

Desperate, Dustin calls a friend from his past, Jamie Powell. She was the only person who believed in him when she lived next door. Perhaps she’ll believe in him now. They haven’t spoken since he went into the Army, but she’s a lawyer now, and he needs a good one.

Jamie drops everything to help Dustin. She has to fight for the right to represent him with the partners of her firm, who fear the repercussions of defending a suspected terrorist.

Meanwhile, Taylor’s fragile recovery from OCD is threatened by the tragedy she underwent. Despite seeing her psychiatrist, starting a new medicine, and being watched over by her sister, Taylor’s grief and guilt over not staying behind to help her friends escalates her symptoms. She feels the only way she can set things right is to find who did this.

I don’t often read suspense novels, but Terri is a master of them. This one had me on the edge of my seat, yet every character drew my sympathy. The faith element is clear and natural and not heavy-handed. If you like suspense—and even if you don’t—I think you would enjoy this book.

Review: Lament for a Father

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Playing catch is a time-honored father-son interaction. Marvin Olasky’s only baseball-related encounter with his father resulted in a missed throw and his father walking away to go back inside.

Marvin uses this incident to typify his relationship with his father, who he says “never laughed and rarely spoke.” His father had been a Harvard graduate with high hopes, but now was frequently chided by his wife for having IQ but no DQ (“determination quotient”).

Marvin’s father, Eli Olasky, died in 1984. In a quest to understand his father better, Marvin used his investigative journalism skills to research Eli’s history. When Marvin, long-time editor of WORLD Magazine, wrote an article about his dysfunctional relationship with his father, letters poured in from readers with their own father difficulties. So Marvin shared his research into his father in Lament for a Father: The Journey to Understanding and Forgiveness.

Marvin interviewed family members, requested his father’s service records, and pieced together what he knew of history at the time and places his father lived. He traces Eli’s progression from a Jewish neighborhood and Hebrew school in addition to day school, Harvard attendance, WWII, where he assisted displaced Jews right after the war, when the Nazis hadn’t had time to dispose of all the bodies before fleeing, disappointment in graduate study opportunities, his series of short-lived teaching or administrative jobs.

His father was a quiet man, probably suffering from PTSD. He avoided arguments, walking away to go to his office and read. He avoided answering questions as well, brushing the questioner off by saying “It’s not important.”

Eli believed in ethnic and cultural but not religious Judaism. He thought the biblical miracles didn’t happen and the narratives were inspirational stories rather than history.

Marvin admits to not respecting his father in his teen and young adult years. He came to regret that later in life. His research made his father come alive in his mind and helped him understand him better. His change of heart toward his father is clear, but he doesn’t say much about processing forgiveness. Obviously, understanding his father better made forgiveness easier, which is a lesson for us all.

At the end of the book, at his publisher’s request, Marvin included his testimony of how he grew up Jewish, became an atheist and Communist, but was converted to Christianity.

Review: What She Left for Me

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In Tracie Peterson’s novel, What She Left for Me, Jana McGuire is a pastor’s wife who just returned home to Spokane from a three-week missions trip to Africa. Puzzled that no one was at the airport to meet her, she hails a cab and arrives at home to a note on the table. Her husband wrote that he left her for his church secretary and wanted a divorce. Jana saw that he also took anything of value in the house, including her jewelry. At the bank the next day, Jana discovers her savings and checking accounts have been cleaned out, leaving her only $10.

Jana’s husband, Rob, told the deacon board at church two weeks previously that he was resigning because Jana wanted out of the marriage. The church searched for an interim pastor and found one, who was moving into the parsonage that weekend. Therefore Jana needed to move out of her home immediately. When Jana explained her circumstances, the men were more sympathetic. But by that time, the interim pastor was still coming, and Jana still needed to leave.

With no home or money, and finding out she is pregnant, Jana has only one choice. She has to call her mother, with whom she was not close: the mother who kept her at arm’s length all her life, wished she was a boy, sent her to boarding schools, and said she wished she had aborted Jana.

Jana’s mother, Eleanor, had moved to Montana to stay with her octogenarian Aunt Taffy. Eleanor doesn’t want Jana to come, but Taffy is thrilled.

As expected, arguments erupt between Jana and her mother frequently while Taffy tries to be a peacemaker. Jana questions her mother about her upbringing in an effort to understand her better, but her mother shuts down any discussion of her past.

Yet Jana’s presence cause Eleanor’s painful memories to resurface, told to the reader in flashbacks. Eleanor had coped by shutting down all past memories and refusing to be vulnerable or close to anyone.

And Jana, in her pain and bitterness, is beginning to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

Tracie includes a note at the beginning of her book forewarning readers that the book will deal with adultery and child abuse. Tracie avoids graphic details, but she wanted to write the book because, at that time (2005), one in four girls were molested before the age of eighteen. She wanted to help readers understand what people in these circumstances go through and encourage reaching out and offering love and help.

I felt Tracie achieved her goal. But I felt she could have done so a little more efficiently. There’s a lot of repetition of certain points in the book. It’s understandable that in real life, people will bring up the same points while arguing, or people processing situations will cover the same ground repeatedly. But fiction is usually a little more streamlined and progresses more logically from point to point.

Plus, a plot device of someone walking in unheard at a vital point in a conversation was used more than once, when once was enough.

But overall, I felt the book did a good job showing what people in Eleanor’s and Jana’s circumstances go through and answering common questions and feelings, like “What did I do wrong to deserve this?” and “Why didn’t God stop this from happening?” Though the subject matter is difficult, it’s also far too common. I applaud Tracy for writing about it.

Review: Far Side of the Sea

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In Far Side of the Sea by Kate Breslin, Lieutenant Colin Mabry had been on the front in WWI. After recovering from a serious accident and the loss of his hand, he’s assigned to MI8, decoding messages sent by carrier pigeon. He’s troubled by the sounds of battle he hears across the channel as well as any loud, sudden noises.

One day he finds a carrier message to himself from a woman he thought dead, Jewel Reyer. She had taken him in, at great risk and cost to herself, when he was injured in France. He had promised to return for her. But then he had his accident and recovery, and afterward heard her entire village had been attacked with no survivors.

He obtains permission to travel to France. He is stunned to find that the message was sent not by Jewel, but by her half-sister Johanna, who works with doves for the French Army Intelligence. Johanna found Jewel’s diary, where she mentioned Colin. Johanna has reason to think her sister is alive and in the custody of a German agent who had been in charge of her village. Johanna wants Colin to help her find Jewel.

Colin is angry at the deception and wary of Johanna. But if there is a chance Jewel is alive and needs his help, he must look for her. He owes her that. Plus, the two were just beginning to develop feelings for each other, and he must know if she still feels the same way.

So he sets aside his anger at Johanna, and they travel to Jewel’s last known location with more questions than answers.

But they find themselves in danger, not knowing whom to trust.

This is the first book I’ve ever read by Kate Breslin, and it definitely reeled me in after the first few chapters. Johanna has several secrets she has not shared with Colin, and bits of her story and background are revealed through the book, as well as her reasons for not sharing all. It takes a while to decide whether she is trustworthy and someone we should be pulling for.

Then they meet an array of iffy characters and situations and face multiple twists and turns.

The story also deals with Colin and Johanna’s inner issues as well. Colin not only suffers from what we now know as PTSD, but he’s lost confidence in himself. Johanna had a checkered upbringing and struggled to find a place to belong or believe that there was a God who was interested in her.

I didn’t know at first that this book was a sequel to another, Not By Sight. Far Side of the Sea read well on its own, but I might like to go back and read the first book some time if I catch it on sale.

I enjoyed the author’s notes at the end, where she tells more about carrier pigeons used in war and what details and people were real or made up.

I’d had the Kindle version of this book for a while, but recently saw the audiobook was among Audible’s free titles. It was nice to switch back and forth between reading or listening, depending on my circumstances.

As I said, this was the first of Kare Breslin’s books I’ve read, but it won’t be the last.

Review: Bleak Landing

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Bleak Landing

In Terrie Todd’s novel, Bleak Landing, Bridget O’Sulliovan’s family had come to the small town of Bleak Landing in Canada from Ireland when she was seven. But her mother and brother died on the voyage. Her father took to drinking, gambling, and beating Bridget, making sure she knew he wished she had been the one to die.

Bridget didn’t fare much better at school. Her fiery red hair, Irish accent, rundown home, and drunken father all made her a target for bullying. Her two worst enemies were Victor Harrison and Bruce Nilsen, who locked her in the school outhouse one day. She vowed then that she’d leave Bleak Landing the first chance she got.

Her resolve was strengthened when she learned that one of her father’s gambling debts involved her.

Leave she did when she was fifteen, finding a job in a textile mill, then in a mansion as a cook’s helper, rising up the ranks to lady’s maid.

She becomes best friends with Maxine, a chatty girl she met at the mill. Maxine and her family are Christians. Bridget thinks they are nice and appreciates their hospitality, but doesn’t feel God has done her any favors.

Several years later, Bridget learns in a roundabout way that her father died and there’s some dispute about his property. At first she doesn’t care. She doesn’t want to see Bleak Landing again, and the property wasn’t much to speak of anyway. But when she loses her job and apartment during the Depression, her father’s property is the only thing in the world she owns besides the clothes she wore.

When she gets back to Bleak Landing, though, no one recognizes her except Victor. She looks much different and doesn’t have any identification.

Victor, during all these years, fought during WWI, was injured, came home, and trained to be a pastor. He regretted the way he treated Bridget when they were kids, but had no way to make amends to her. But will she forgive him and let him help her?

Bridget’s story was heart-breaking at first. She rises above her circumstances, but she doesn’t let anyone in and doesn’t share anything about her past with anyone. It’s a wonder, humanly speaking, that Maxine put up with her negativity, especially not knowing what caused it.. But eventually Bridget’s heart softens as she realizes she might need more than spunk to get through life.

I wouldn’t agree with every little theological point made, and I am not a fan of ecumenism between gospel-preaching and works-based churches.

But otherwise, I loved the characters and story.

Review: A Beautiful Disguise

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A Beautiful Disguise by Roseanna M. White

In A Beautiful Disguise, a novel by Roseanna M. White, siblings Yates and Marigold Fairfax had an idyllic childhood in Edwardian England. Their father loved entertainment and spent lavish money on it, even buying a circus. They grew up playing with the animals, learning the trapeze, loving the performers like family.

The Fairfaxes didn’t know, until their father’s death when they were young adults, that all the entertainment came at a steep price. They weren’t in debt, but there was no money. They needed not only to take care of themselves and the family estate, but the circus performers who depended on them.

They decided to use their skills to start an investigations company: The Imposters, LTD. They’d maintain their positions as Lord and Lady Fairfax in 1908 British society, not so much because they cared about position, but because that’s the world they knew and moved in and where their clientele would come from. Marigold remade many of her mother’s beautiful old gowns into outlandish costumes with ostrich plumes and wide hat brims so that people would notice her persona, not her. Her friend, Gemma, alias newspaper columnist G. M. Parker, played up Marigold’s “Lady M” by reporting on her lavish clothing. It worked so well that Gemma could sometimes pose as Marigold because people usually looked at her outfits, not her face.

Sir Merritt Livingstone was a faithful soldier for ten years. But a severe bout of pneumonia took ages to recover from. He’s still not at full steam, so he’s been given a desk job in the War Office Intelligence Division. One of his agents has not been heard from in an unusual amount of time. His most recent coded telegram simply contained the name of Merritt’s boss, Lord Henning. Merritt doesn’t want to believe anything ill of Henning, but he has to discreetly find out what’s going on.

Sounds like a job for the Imposters.

When Merritt meets the intriguing Lady M. at a ball, he has no idea she’s half the team looking into his request.

At first it might sound odd for a titled family to own a circus. The Fairfaxes family home was in Northumberland while they spent “the season” in London, so much of society didn’t know they had a lion in their back yard and a high wire set-up in their gym. But the circus situation worked into the story believably and smoothly. In fact, it was fun and different. Yates’ and Marigold’s acrobatic training came in handy climbing window ledges to eavesdrop, and their stage makeup allowed them to disguise themselves.

The characters and plot are well-drawn and compelling. The faith element is woven in naturally.

I listened to the audiobook wonderfully read by Susan Lyons. I missed the author’s notes at the end, which I wished audiobooks included. But I did see this blog post where Roseanna introduced the series and this interview, in which she shares some of her inspiration.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can’t wait for the sequel.

Review: A Fool and His Monet

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A Fool and His Monet

In the novel A Fool and His Monet by Sandra Orchard, Serena Jones is a new member of the FBI Art Crime Team. She was motivated by the death of her grandfather during an art theft and hopes her new position will help her find his killer.

Serena’s friend, Zoe, the temporary head of security at the local art museum, brings Serena in to report the theft of two paintings in storage, a Monet and a Rijckaert. Since the paintings were in storage, the theft had not been noticed immediately. So the case was already somewhat cold. But Serena immediately begins interviewing museum employees. Her trainer, Tanner, joins her on the case. Oddly, her supervisor makes her stop investigating her lead suspect.

Serena’s mother pesters her to get a nice, safe, normal job and give her grandchildren. Her aunt fancies herself an amateur sleuth and offers Serena advice. The aunt even inserts herself into some of Serena’s investigation.

Though the book has some serious and touching moments, it’s somewhat a comedy of errors. But the case eventually gets solved with many twists and detours along the way.

I enjoyed several art-related details sprinkled throughout the book, especially one quote from Stella Adler: “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.”

There’s a light faith element: a few mentions of God and prayer.

This isn’t my usual genre of book. But that’s one nice thing about Kindle sales: trying something you might not have otherwise.

I admit I got a little lost on some of the details. And I wasn’t fond of Serena’s aunt’s involvement. But overall this was a fun book. If you like figuring out mysteries with comedic undertones, you might like this one.

Review: Hannah Coulter

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Hannah Coulter is Wendell Berry’s seventh book, published 44 years after Nathan Coulter. But the action picks up right where Nathan Coulter left off. I’ve only read these two books and Jayber Crow, but I understand that Hannah appears in some of the other Port William books as well.

Hannah tells her story as an elderly woman, twice widowed, looking back over her life. She was born in 1922 as the only daughter to her parents. Their farm was owned by her father’s mother, Grandmam, who lived and worked with the family.

Hannah had responsibilities around the farm from the time she was five or six. By the age of twelve, when her mother died, Hannah could do “a woman’s part.” She tells of her father’s remarrying a woman who “lived up to the bad reputation of stepmothers.” Grandmam watched out for Hannah, though, providing for her to go to high school and secure her first job.

Hannah met her first husband, Virgil Feltner, at work. He died in WWII while Hannah was expecting her first child. Hannah lived with her in-laws, who loved her like a daughter.

Then Nathan Coulter came back from the war and helped the Feltners out on their farm. Hannah tells of his budding interest, then hers, until they finally married and moved into the fixer-upper farm he bought.

Along with the details of their lives together, Hannah shares the history of the times and the community of neighbors that they called “The Membership.” The Membership wasn’t an official club; rather, that’s what they called the group who lived near each other and helped each other on their farms.

Over the course of Hannah’s long life, Port William saw many changes. Hannah decried many of the changes, like not knowing many of the families in the community any more, some technologicaladvances, and so on. Many of the “Membership’s” young people did not stay on the family farms, including Hannah’s.

Hannah Coulter reminds me of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books in the sense of showing how people used to live and how things changed over the decades of one person’s life. But Berry’s voice is quite different from Wilder’s.

Hannah is my favorite of the three Port William books I have read so far. There’s an unfortunate smattering of bad language, as with the other books. Michele Morin had hosted a discussion of Jayber Crow (which I think is what prompted me to read it) and mentioned once that it sometimes felt that Berry took the microphone in place of Jayber. I had that same feeling in a couple of places here, particularly in passages about the war.

But Hannah seems the most authentically Christian of Berry’s characters that I’ve encountered so far. And the main strength of Berry’s writing is the lyricism, the sense of place, community, love, and relationships.

A few quotes that stood out to me:

Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

The living can’t quit living because the world has turned terrible and people they love and need are killed. They can’t because they don’t. The light that shines into darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. It calls them back again into the great room. It calls them into their bodies and into the world, into whatever the world will require. It calls them into work and pleasure, goodness and beauty, and the company of other loved ones.

I began to trust the world again, not to give me what I wanted, for I saw that it could not be trusted to do that, but to give unforeseen goods and pleasures that I had not thought to want.

Sometimes…I wander about in this house that Nathan and I renewed, that is now aged and worn by our life in it. How many steps, wearing the thresholds? I look at it all again. Sometimes it fills to the brim with sorrow, which signifies the joy that has been here, and the love. It is entirely a gift.

It is hard to say what it means to be at work and thinking of a person you loved and love still who did that same work before you and who taught you to do it. It is a comfort ever and always, like hearing the rhyme come when you are singing a song.

He was a humorous, good-natured man, maybe because he hoped for little and expected less and took his satisfactions where he found them.

A lifetime’s knowledge shimmers on the face of the land in the mind of a person who knows. The history of a place is the mind of an old man or an old woman who knows it.

Even old, your husband is the young man you remember now. Even dead, he is the man you remember, not as he was but as he is, alive still in your love. Death is a sort of lens, though I used to think of it as a wall or a shut door. It changes things and makes them clear. Maybe it is the truest way of knowing this dream, this brief and timeless life.

Any time an eighteen-year-old boy tells you not to worry, you had better worry.

Members of Port William aren’t trying to get someplace. They think they are someplace.

One theme that comes up continually is something Nathan says. When unexpected changes come, even his own terminal diagnosis, Nathan says he’s just going to “live right on.” “Living right on called for nothing out of the ordinary. We made no changes. We only accepted the changes as they came.”

I listened to the audiobook nicely read by Susan Denaker.

Have you read Hannah Coulter or others of Berry’s books? What did you think?