Voices In Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher

 

You'll never go wrong picking up a Rosamunde Pilcher book. My father's favorite author, but my mother was the one that introduced me to her. Mrs. Pilcher weaves stories about real people and they usually live in England. It's as if she gathers together characters that don't exactly know one another and puts them together in one small village or a house and they become somewhat of a family. You cannot put her books down so you might as well know that and get ready for a feast.

 

This book, Voices in Summer, is mainly about Laura. She has married a much older man who had been previously married. She feels out of sorts around the friends he and his glamorous first wife had and she would rather not be in their presence. It's awkward hearing about how Erica would do this and do that, and she was such a friend, etc. Really? She was such a friend but she left you and her husband and so forth to go to America with another man who has horses ... her real true loves?

 

But Laura also has female issues that have prevented her from giving her new husband a child. Trying to correct the problem she has an operation but must recuperate somewhere. Enter Tremenheere and the people who live in this tiny place that rejuvenates her while her husband has to go to New York on business. Tremenheere brings with it its' own intrigue of characters who seem to live free where the ocean is not far away, the warm breezes blow and the chill mornings wrap people up in their own thoughts while holding a cup of tea.

 

Make your own cup of tea or coffee and get ready to sit awhile as you get lost in the lives of others and wish you were there.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

 

 

I got this one from my daughter who picked it up at an airport before a flight she took here to visit me. During her stay she finished it and left it for me to read. As I was already into a book, I put it on my bookshelf for another day. That other day was about a week ago and I wondered at the beginning if I was going to like it.

 

The subject was flowers, which I love, and how they intertwine with communication, foster care and all of the emotions wrapped up in all of those categories.

 

In the Victorian era people loved to communicate through flowers and their meanings. If a suitor sent a young lady a certain flower it may mean that he liked her. She could send a flower back that would indicate the return of the sentiment or denial of feelings.

 

In the case of Victoria, our main character in this book, she finds it hard to open up to people. Communication in any way is painful, eye contact not something she engages in. By the time she is nine years old she has been ripped from one foster care or group home to another. Mainly through her own actions out of anger.

 

But she finds, through Elizabeth who is her last hope, a way to tell people what she is feeling without actually saying the words. She learns everything about flowers and their meanings through Elizabeth. Slowly she opens up like a sunflower to the sun, only to destroy any relationship that is good because she just can't handle it. Having a truthful, love without boundaries relationship is scary.

 

Enter another person, named Grant, and I'll let you read this book in order to see how Victoria handles her own dispair, depression and fears with the help of flowers and a handful of people who let her be herself no matter what the cost to them.

 

Patience is truly a virtue.

Cane River by Lalita Tademy

 

Wow! This was the best find at my Goodwill store. Of course, I loved the cover. Old pictures on a cover always grab me. So I picked it up and read the jacket. Then I bought the book and read it.

 

If you like ancestry.com or anything genealogical, then you will enjoy this book as you follow the lives of "four astonishing women who battled vast injustices to create a legacy of hope and achievement" from 1799 to around 1936. It began in slavery,  survived the Civil War and emancipation.

 

You will get caught up in the minds, hearts and souls of these women who were young mothers, lived to be grandmothers and great grandmothers keeping their line alive through hardship and determination with a goal of making a better future for their girls to pass through as they got whiter and whiter.

 

But ... it doesn't end there.

 

So pick this novel up by Lalita Tademy who found herself "swept up in an obsessive two-year odyssey" "leaving her corporate career for the little Louisiana farming community of Cane River". Lalita found her family's roots here "on a medium-sized Creole plantation owned by a family named Derbanne".

 

This is a good one, so find it at your local library and be prepared to escape into the lines of this compelling family story. You won't be disappointed.

The Island by Elin Hilderbrand

Here's a good one to read this summer if you haven't read it already. This one I picked up from the shelf at a Rite Aid during a time when I was taking care of my father after he fell and broke a hip. You need a good book to get through that kind of trauma with a parent! Something that will get your mind off of yourself and into another world.

Enter Tuckernuck Island. It exists off the coast of Nantucket. "No phones, no television, no grocery store"... "a place without distractions". That's where this story takes place and by the time you finish reading this book you'll want to pack a light bag, but with plenty of groceries in the boot of your car, and head there yourself.

You will get caught up in the lives of a mother, a daughter, her sister and an aunt who all want to "escape their troubles". But enter some men on the scene and you know what trouble that can stir up, right? Don't worry, this is not a romance novel but a real good relationship story that brings lives and emotions together in a page turner that will get you through your own tough time or any time at all.

The Island is "the perfect getaway".

So get your fan blowing on you because it's hot on Tuckernuck Island where there's no AC but only the breeze off the ocean. Lemonade, anyone?



Tender at the Bone - Growing Up at the Table by Ruth Reichl

 

This book was a pleasure to read. If it is a rainy weekend, just forget about doing anything else and curl up on the couch with a blanket thrown over you with a delicious cup of coffee or a delicate tea with cookies.

By the way, I picked this book up at my local Goodwill. I have found that my Goodwill store has become my new place to find books to read. They are cheap and there are many different genres to choose from. Who knew?

What caught my attention first was the precious cover. Then the title. I picked it up from the pile of books on the table and turned it over to read the back of the jacket cover. It read:

At an early age, Ruth Reichl discovered that "food could be a way of making sense of the world ...".

It went on to say that is was a memoir. That was good enough for me since I just read a biography of Rock Hudson (which I checked out of my small library) and I was on a roll in that area. Also I read that Ruth "is the restaurant critic for the New York Times".

Hmmm. That statement made me want to see how her interest in food as a child propelled her into finally being a food critic as an adult. So I brought it home, opened it up and didn't want to put it down.

Included all along within the stories are delightful recipes that are part of the story being told at that time. It certainly makes you want to stop reading and make something yummy. Some of your choices would be:

Miriam Reichl's Corned Beef Ham
Aunt Birdie's Potato Salad
Alice's Apple Dumplings with Hard Sauce
The Swallow's Pork and Tomatillo Stew

And that's just to name a few. But the stories that go with the food and how Ruth came to cook them is wonderful.

Thank you to Ruth Reichl for writing a book I did not want to put down. Those are the best!