The River Runs South

Camille Taylor has spent years deliberately and carefully building her life as a lawyer in Washington, DC. When her husband dies suddenly, her entire world collapses. After fighting her grief, and herself, for over a year, she decides to pack up and go home to Alabama. Camille figures the change of scenery will be good for both herself and her daughter, Willa.

The salt air and slow rhythms of the coast soothe Camille’s spirit, but she learns that some things have changed in her hometown. Run-off from an abandoned development site is polluting the water, and someone has brought a lawsuit against the site’s owners, including Camille’s father. She volunteers to join her father’s defense team, but the more she works on the case, the more she wonders if she joined the right side of the fight.

The River Runs South is a fantastic story about hitting the bottom and climbing back to the top. It shows that not only can you go home again, but sometimes it’s the best thing you didn’t know you needed. It is also a timely commentary on Alabama’s fragile ecosystem and the fragility of grief, love, and community.

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I fell deep into this book from the first chapter and couldn’t put it down until I knew what Camille would do for herself and Willa. Camille is one of the best characters I have read in a long time. She is naturally filled with the conflicts of being a human, a mother, a daughter, and a widow. I absolutely love her, and I love that she feels so real.

Online Business Secrets for Women

Online Business Secrets for Women is a well-written and thorough guide for anyone wanting to start their own business. She discusses everything from finances and anxiety to finding your niche and everything in between. As someone kick-starting a freelance business, this book is a valuable asset to my planning process as I shift to working from home.

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She starts by confronting the lies that everyone tells themselves when they lack the confidence to start something. This is my biggest hurdle, so having her address that first was nice. It made the rest of the book seem achievable.

The second chapter is about finding your why (which is cliche and overused, but whatever). Covid brought business home and accessible, so she encourages readers to use its momentum for their own projects. The writer was forced into her personal business pivot due to Covid layoffs; now, she is encouraging others to take the leap before they potentially end up in her position of desperation. So many people forced into home businesses or remote working are finding themselves happier and more fulfilled than in pre-Covid positions, even four years later.

An online business is perfect for introverts because all interactions are through online written communication. I know this is big for me. I’d prefer written communication when establishing a business interaction, but as a writer, that isn’t terribly surprising. But whether you’re an introvert or just nervous about something new online, written communications are a great way to kick-start your new endeavor.

Some other key things she talks about are:
*Financial changes are scary when it comes to changing jobs, and there are many things to consider. She dedicates an entire chapter to this.
*Working on your time management is key for a work-from-home/life balance.
*The most important thing is to figure out your asset skills to determine which are both marketable and will feed your soul using them daily. When you own your skills, everything else falls into place.

I have to say that for a book about starting your own business, Online Business Secrets for Women is a great and comprehensive guide. And I love that it is completely geared toward women since almost all other business books are geared toward men.

The Woman at the Wheel

The Woman at the Wheel is a historical fiction novel that focuses on Bertha Ringer-Benz, the wife of Carl Benz, the man who invented the first motorwagen and, ultimately, the Mercedes-Benz company.

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It is a slow-burn story about the eventual creation of the car. However, I appreciate the focus on Bertha and not her husband. Overall, it was a good story about a woman and her devotion to her family, her husband’s career, and her own dreams.

This is also a story of a woman who longs to be more than just a girl. She is a feminist of her time and is also deeply devoted to her husband and children. She is just as invested and devoted to her family as she is to her husband’s invention. Everything that she does is to advance and care for everyone in her home, including using her dowry as an investment during the prototype process of inventing the vehicle and stepping into business negotiations when women were not involved in business dealings.

I have been privileged enough to have visited the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart, Germany. I remember some talk about the Benz family, but I cannot remember how much they talked about Bertha. I guess I need to plan another trip and find out.

Book Shopping

Can we talk for a minute about buying used books?

I love books. I love buying books. I love supporting writers. I do not love the big store prices. And as an eco-nerd, I do not love wasting things. So many times, the books I buy are used or come from a place that sells used books.

Last weekend, I popped into my favorite local thrift shop and found three books that needed a new home in my personal library. All are on my TBR, and since I was at the thrift store, I spent a grand total of $5 for them. I can tell you that two of these books have never been read. They are hardbacks with perfectly crisp spines and pages that don’t fall open, and I paid $2 each for them.

Now, I understand that I am not financially supporting authors by purchasing used books. But I also understand that buying books, especially paperbacks, for $20 is not necessarily within a person’s budget. So, if someone wants to grow or start a book collection, buying used is a great way. Especially right now, when basic necessities are expensive, buying oneself a book as a treat shouldn’t be looked down upon if it is done cheaply. And, realistically speaking, any author who isn’t Stephen King likely has another job that pays their bills, a spouse with a well-paying job, or a fellowship grant, so I don’t feel guilty about buying a used book and not financially supporting writers.

What is Mine

When a nine-year-old boy goes missing, two women’s lives become forever intertwined. One woman is looking for answers about her sister; the other will do whatever it takes to make her husband happy and love her again.

Luca Wen’s first nine years were spent living a nomadic, often unsafe, life. When his mother dies, he is sent to live with his Aunt Hope in a quiet neighborhood with other kids his age. Life is stable and safe with Hope until the day he goes missing, seemingly vanishing into thin air. As Hope searches for Luca, her sister’s mysterious death and nomadic life seem to be the only thing she can connect to Luca’s disappearance. What and who she discovers while finding Luca is more twisted than Hope could have imagined.

As a mom, What is Mine pulled me in from the beginning. I have not been this emotionally invested in a book in a long time. It is a story full of emotion, both heartbreaking and heartwarming, so it was impossible not to become emotionally invested. The multiple layers of mystery that flow throughout the story are written in such a way that you cannot help but continually turn pages to satiate your curiosity.

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The House is on Fire

The House is on Fire is a well-written work of historical fiction about a tragedy that tore apart a community in a single night.

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On the night after Christmas in 1811, the Richmond Theater was packed with more than 600 showgoers. When the theater goes up in flames in the middle of the performance, four people each make a split-second decision that will affect their own lives and many others. In the days following the fire, as news of the disaster spreads across the country and people try to determine the cause of the fire, the paths of these four people will become forever intertwined.

Based on the true story of Richmond’s theater fire, The House is on Fire offers hope that sometimes in the midst of tragedy, we are offered a chance for something new.

I got sucked into this book from the very first page. It tells the story of four people who experienced the Richmond theater fire in 1811. Each of them sees the world in a new light in the days following the fire. They all come to realize that life as they knew it was darker than they thought, and it is up to them to change their futures. By telling the story not only from multiple sides but from both slave and free perspectives, it gives a more complete look at lives during that time and what an event like this could mean for everyone in the area.

Listen for the Lie

Five years ago Lucy was found on the side of the road, in the middle of the night, covered in her best friend’s blood.

Everyone in Lucy and Savvy’s small Texas town thinks that Lucy murdered Savvy. There isn’t enough evidence to prove whether she did or didn’t, and Lucy can’t remember anything from that night. The accusations broke up Lucy’s marriage, so without her best friend or husband to keep her there, Lucy decides to start over by moving to California, essentially creating a new life.

Five years ago seems like a small amount of time, but it’s long enough that a true crime podcaster is now looking into the murder for his next season. Lucy feels compelled to return to her hometown to face the past, and see if she can help to find who killed her friend, even though she knows that there’s a chance that it was actually her that committed the crime.

First, I have to thank Celedon for allowing me to read an early copy of Listen for the Lie. I appreciate your trust in me to read the book early and to give an honest review of my thoughts.

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Listen for the Lie was surprisingly not as predictable as I expected it to be when I started it. In fact, the ending was nothing that I expected at all; that twist was a fantastic way to end the story. And I was very impressed with how realistically Lucy was written as a character. She is a very well-written and well-developed trauma survivor. Like most survivors, she wants the healing that comes from discovering the truth, but she also fears it. This conflict within her drives everything that she does, and you can’t help but to feel for her and attach yourself to her as the friend who wants her to know the truth.

I loved this book so much that I have already begun recommending it to friends that I know love this type of book. If you love reading crime books, or listening to true crime podcasts this book will be perfect for you.

The Night Travelers

The Night Travelers is a new and interesting twist on the World War Two, flight from persecution story. It is a story of saving and protecting your child. And it is a story of confusion about your identity while knowing that confusion stems from the only method of keeping you alive and safe. 

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Ally, Lillith, and Nadine are three generations of women who have each made a hard sacrifice in order to keep their child safe. Ally sent Lillith away to keep her from Nazi persecution. Lillith sent Nadine away to keep her safe during the upheaval of Cuba. Nadine cut herself from her adoptive parents, the only parents she ever knew, in order to guarantee herself an opportunity for a future. Decades later, Nadine finds herself in Berlin, facing the ghosts of her mother and grandmother in ways she never expected. Working with her daughter, she hopes to finally piece her history together enough to fully understand who she is and why Ally and Lillith made their choices.

As parents, we all make tough decisions for the betterment of our children. But these women made the ultimate sacrifice for their kids in a way I will never understand.

This book has many angles and perspectives, but they flow together flawlessly. I loved the way it was brought full circle geographically by starting and ending in Germany. It just goes to show that if you want to find the answers, sometimes you need to go back to where it all started.

The Bereaved

In 1859, Martha was newly widowed and quickly made aware that her husband had put their children under the stewardship of a predatory man. Rather than stay and have this man abuse her and her children, she packs up the children and flees to New York City to start a life on their own. She underestimated the difficulties of starting over with no financial backing. When Martha finally finds a job, it is for a man who is no better than the one she fled, and it doesn’t pay enough to both house and feed her family of five.

Eventually, Martha discovers The Home for the Friendless, an aid organization that helps feed, house, and educate children in need. When desperation gets to the extreme, Martha takes her children there so that they can get some help and food while she works on a new plan for their survival. When visiting day comes around, Martha finds that all four of her children have been sent to homes in other states and will not return to New York. Now Martha has to make another new plan, but this time, it means finding her children and bringing them home.

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Orphan Train stories have been around for decades. This is not the first one I’ve read, but this one hit differently, and I think that is because The Bereaved is written from the parent’s perspective. So many of these stories are told from the children’s point of view, and I found it refreshing to read from the other side. Writing from the mother’s point of view brought more emotion to the story, which helped draw me in. As a mother, I cannot even imagine the intense emotion that would come from being in Martha’s position. Just the betrayal alone of having this aid organization essentially steal my children instead of doing what they promised. That emotion came out in telling the story from Martha’s point of view.

Much of this time in our history is still kept secretive. Yes, there was a lot going on in our country then, but we need to tell more of these stories. I would love to see more exposure to this time and these issues in books to learn what happened. Using the mother’s perspective in this book is a great start.

The Last Carolina Girl

The Last Carolina Girl had me hooked from page one. It is a phenomenal read about a history the United States tries to forget. This book touches on a medical history of our country that doesn’t get talked about enough. When we hear the word “eugenics,” we think about Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, but it was happening here too.

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Leah is orphaned at age 14, and her world collapses. She is sent to a home where she hopes to be accepted, only to have her world cave in even more. It turns out she has walked into a home filled with old rivalries and petty grudges. She is living with the physical embodiment of “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Leah is regularly punished, not for her behavior, but for her parents’ choices that other people disagree with. Leah ends up with physical scars from someone looking for revenge for their unhealed emotional scars. Thankfully, someone from her past comes to her rescue and shows her what a true family can be.

This book broke my heart. As a woman, a human, and an American, this book saddened me deep into my soul.

Women and their bodies need to be respected. There is absolutely no reason for a woman’s body to be controlled by anyone other than herself. And like in this story, those who are trying to take control of a woman’s body are people who are petty and trying to hurt others as a means of making themselves feel better.