The Summer of Good Intentions by Wendy Francis

The Summer of Good Intentions by Wendy Francis
Published by Simon & Schuster Paperbacks ISBN 9781451666427
Trade paperback, $15, 294 pages

As the dog days of summer wind down, Wendy Francis' The Summer of Good Intentions is the perfect book to read at the beach or on the porch.

A family reunites to spend their annual July vacation at their summer home on Cape Cod. Maggie is mom to three, married to a great guy, and the organizer of the family. Jess is a high school principal, struggling to balance her demanding job, her children and a husband who is more interested in his job than his family. Virgie is the single one, a career-driven reporter trying to get a job as a TV news anchor and just staring a promising relationship.

Their parents have recently divorced, and their mother Gloria is bringing her new boyfriend to the house. This makes their dad, Arthur, a mystery book writer, very sad as he doesn't understand why their marriage fell apart.

Maggie fears that her life will become empty as her children get older and need her less. She wants to bring a foster child into the family but must first convince her husband. Jess' marriage woes have led her to place that could destroy her marriage and Virgie's work stresses have made her physically ill.

I just fell into this story, reading it in two sittings. The sibling relationships felt so real, and the story of the three marriages facing different challenges was so engrossing. I felt like I was in the family vacation home, watching these people interact around me.

We are privy to the secrets and feelings that each character has, and just like in life, things happen that can bring people together or tear them apart. Wendy Francis brings to life this interesting family, one just like our own, and she does so with heart and compassion that we can't help but want them to be happy even as the sad things that life inevitably brings each us do their best to bring us down.

This is the second book I have read that features a character who is a hoarder (the other being Mary Pflum Peterson's upcoming memoir White Dresses), and it has given me more compassion for people who suffer from this disorder and for the family members who try to deal with them and the physical and emotional mess they leave behind.

I loved The Summer of Good Intentions, and give it my highest recommendation. If you've ever sat on the beach talking with your sisters, this is the book for you.


My review of White Dresses is here.

Montpelier Tomorrow by Marylee MacDonald

Montpelier Tomorrow by Marylee MacDonald
Published by All That Matters Press ISBN 9780990715818
Trade paperback, $16.69, 308 pages

A family dealing with the devastating diagnosis of ALS is the subject of Marylee MacDonald's intense novel Montpelier Tomorrow. Colleen Gallagher is a suburban Chicago kindergarten teacher and mother of three adult children. She raised her young children on her own when her husband died in a car accident years ago, and spent the last few years caring for her Alzheimer's-afflicted mother who recently died.

When her daughter's husband is diagnosed with a fast-moving form of ALS, Lou Gerhig's disease, Colleen rushes to her daughter's family in Washington DC to help care for Sandy, (who just gave birth to baby boy Ben) three-year-old Josh and son-in-law Tony.

Sandy and Colleen's relationship is not the perfect mother-daughter one. I found Sandy's need for order and control and the rude way she expresses that need to her mother unsettling. Sandy constantly berates her mother and even throws Tony's parents out of her home for a minor offense.

Tony deteriorates quickly and Colleen comes to stay with the family and help during her summer vacation. Sandy has to work as a lawyer to support her family now that Tony is housebound, so Colleen not only cares for the children, but she reluctantly becomes Tony's caregiver as well.

The characters in Montpelier Tomorrow are different from other books of this type in that they are not the let's-everyone-pitch-in-and-make-it-better people. Sandy is resentful of her husband's illness, Tony is self-centered and self-pitying, and Colleen just wants to return to her own life back in Chicago. Tony's parents' idea of helping is to let Colleen do the actual, difficult physical care of their son while they pop in from time to time.

MacDonald provides a realistic look at the tough day-to-day living as a caregiver to an adult with ALS. She pulls no punches at the frustrations, the anger and the punishing physical toll it takes on Colleen, who steps up when no one else will.

Colleen and Sandy's relationship is a tough one to read about, but eventually we discover what is behind Sandy's resentment. It reinforces that parents don't always know what their children are thinking as they grow up, and the same is true of children about their parents. We tend to ascribe motivations to each other because we don't really understand each other.

There is a sad twist at the end of the story that comes on suddenly and changes everything. I admit to not seeing this one coming and it felt like a punch to the gut. Montpelier Tomorrow is a tough read, and MacDonald does a terrific job putting you in the shoes of this family in crisis. You make not like all of them but you will feel their pain. Colleen is a wonderfully complex, unforgettable character, and I for one would love to see more of her story.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Marylee MacDonald's tour. The rest of the tour stops are here:

Marylee’s Tour Stops

Monday, August 24th: bookchickdi

Wednesday, August 26th: Peeking Between the Pages

Monday, August 31st: BoundbyWords

Monday, August 31st: A Bookish Way of Life

Friday, September 4th: Queen of All She Reads

Friday, September 4th: Back Porchervations

Tuesday, September 8th: Kritters Ramblings

Wednesday, September 9th: Raven Haired Girl

Thursday, September 10th: Time 2 Read

Tuesday, September 15th: Sharon’s Garden of Book Reviews

Wednesday, September 16th: Thoughts On This ‘n That

Thursday, September 17th: Seaside Book Nook

Monday, September 21st: The Reading Cove Book Club

Tuesday, September 22nd: Good Girl Gone Redneck

Wednesday, September 23rd: Diary of an Alzheimer’s Caregiver

Thursday, September 24th: Ace and Hoser Blook

Weekend Cooking- Our Week On The Lake

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.

Every year we go back home to the Finger Lakes region and rent a house on Owasco Lake. My family spends the day with us, and we grill hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch, a treat that we sorely miss living in Manhattan.

Our view of Owasco Lake

At night, I make a big dinner, where salt potatoes are on the menu. How I miss salt potatoes in the summer! You can't find them here in the big city.  And leftover salt potatoes make fantastic breakfast potatoes the next day with peppers and onions.

Leftover salt potatoes make great breakfast potatoes

I made some of our favorite recipes that I found on Pinterest: Red Wine Marinated Flank Steak, Italian Mac and Cheese, Broccoli Salad, Strawberry Pretzel Jello, Mary Alice's Hoagie Dip,  SoCal Fajita Dip, Cream Cheese Cookies (2 batches) and Peanut Butter Crack Brownies. Two recipes paid homage to the area; I made Chicken Spiedie Sandwiches and Utica Chicken Riggies, both family favorites.

I tried a few new recipes too- New York Deli Nachos and Cobb Dip that I made for our friends' party and a tasty party beverage, White Zinfandel Peach Sangria. Everybody wanted the recipe for the sangria. It was light and crisp and perfect for a summer evening. The New York Deli Nachos were delicious, but a bit too messy for a party, and I personally liked the Cobb Dip the best.

Cobb Dip

Our friends always bring treats to share and this year we had a lovely fruit cobbler made with seasonal fruits, pumpkin cookies (my family loves these) and the popular Barbara's Famous Birthday Cake. Someone was pouting that he didn't get any cake the next day, so I had to make a cake when we got home.

Since it's blueberry season, I made a Buttermilk Blueberry Breakfast Cake that disappeared pretty darn quickly. (I made it when we returned home too, that's how great it was.)

Buttermilk Blueberry Breakfast Cake

I also made S'mores Bites, which tasted terrific, but alas, I left them under the broiler a tad too long so they didn't look very appetizing. (The perils of using an oven I was not used to.)

Every year people ask for the recipes, so I create a Pinterest board with all of them and shared them with everyone who wanted them. The board is here:
https://www.pinterest.com/bookchickdi/owasco-lake-2015/

We love our time back home, it's so relaxing and it's a nice treat for me to cook in a spacious beautiful kitchen. And of course, I made my pilgrimages to my beloved Wegmans. I can't wait until they come to Brooklyn.

White Dresses by Mary Pflum Peterson

White Dresses by Mary Pflum Peterson
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks ISBN 9780062386977
Trade paperback, $15.99, 352 pages

Mary Pflum Peterson opens her emotionally moving memoir White Dresses as she is frantically searching through her mother's closet for the white dresses that marked the most memorable days of her life, such as her Communion dress, and her high school graduation dress.

But her mother's closet was not like most of our mother's closets. Mary's mother Anne Diener Pflum was a hoarder. For over twenty years, she didn't throw anything away. The home was filled with broken appliances, bags of trash, dead animals, piles of clothes, newspapers and years of unopened mail. Mary could barely make it up the stairs to get to the closet.

Like most hoarders, there was a mental illness behind Anne's hoarding behavior. Mary sets out to discover what in her mother's life caused her to become a hoarder, and she writes her mother's story with such a compassionately clear eye that White Dresses is one of the most compelling memoirs I have ever read.

Anne grew up in a strict Catholic family, with a father she wanted attention from and a mother who only wanted the attention of her husband. Anne's mother had five miscarriages after she had had five babies in six years, Anne being the oldest.

The first trauma in Anne's life came when her mother decided it was time to throw away young Anne's security blanket. Anne considered the blanket her friend and couldn't believe that her mother took it away from her.

Anne was a good student, and was excited to be able to go away to college. She thrived there, studying hard, making good friends and finding a boyfriend she adored. Then her boyfriend transferred to a different school and Anne fell into a terrible depression and returned home.

Her parents didn't know what to do with her, other than pray, and soon Anne decided to enter the convent like her younger sister did. Her family was shocked, but they let her go.

Life at the convent was very difficult, and not a good solution for a young woman suffering from depression. Anne became seriously ill, and if not for the intervention of a young priest who insisted that the nuns take Anne to a hospital, she would have died.

Eventually Anne left the convent and returned to college. There she met Dale and as she was getting on in age and wanted a family, she ignored signs that she shouldn't have, and she married Dale over the objection of the priest who saved her life.

Anne and Dale had two children, Mary and Anthony. Life as a family was difficult, even more so when Dale finally told Anne that he was gay and wanted a divorce. Left with two young children, Anne began her hoarding behavior that would only worsen over the years.

Mary talks to her aunts and uncles and learns things about her mother that she didn't know. One thing that White Dresses will encourage you to do is to talk to your parents to find out what their life was like before they became your mom and dad. It reminds us that they had interesting, and sometimes sad, lives that we may know little about.

Mary Pflum tells her mother's story and her own through the white dresses that mark the major milestones in their lives. Wearing white meant a new beginning, a cleansing for your life. Saving those dresses was important to Mary because even if she couldn't save her mother from her hoarding behavior, she could at least save the dresses they shared.

You can feel the sadness and frustration that Mary feels about her mother, but you can also feel her love and compassion as well. Mary loves her mother and even when she is disappointed in her behavior, that love is evident. I give White Dresses my highest recommendation and it would make a wonderful book to share with your mother and with your book club.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Mary Pflum Peterson's tour. The rest of the tour dates are here:

Mary’s Tour Stops

Tuesday, August 18th: bookchickdi

Wednesday, August 19th: 5 Minutes For Books

Thursday, August 20th: Sara’s Organized Chaos

Friday, August 21st: Snowdrop Dreams of Books

Monday, August 24th: Novel Escapes

Tuesday, August 25th: From the TBR Pile

Wednesday, August 26th: BookNAround

Friday, August 28th: Kritters Ramblings

Wednesday, September 2nd: Raven Haired Girl

Thursday, September 3rd: Thoughts on This ‘n That

Weekend Cooking- The Cherry Harvest by Lucy Sanna

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.


The Beach Club Book Club chose Lucy Sanna's debut novel, The Cherry Harvest, as our next book. The story is set in Door County, Wisconsin in 1944. While most of the young men are off fighting WWII, the migrant workers who usually work picking the cherries on Christiansen farm are working in munitions factories making more money.

Charlotte Christiansen fears that they won't be able to bring in the cherry harvest and that they could possibly lose everything they have worked for. She tells her husband Thomas that they must convince the town leaders to use Nazi prisoners of war being housed nearby to help them pick the cherries.

Many of the townspeople are opposed to this, and although Charlotte's son Ben is off fighting in Europe, she believes this is the only way for them to survive. The conflict between the townspeople and the farmers grows more contentious when one of the prisoners working on the Christiansen farm goes missing.

The Cherry Harvest is a wonderful book, drawing the reader into this world. I read it in two sittings, totally engrossed in the story and the difficult, very physical life of a farm family. It makes you respect the work it takes to provide food for all of us.

There are many food references in The Cherry Harvest, and I particularly enjoyed this paragraph, describing Charlotte making her delicious pies to sell at their farm stand.

"Charlotte might make fifty or sixty or even one hundred pies, but she made them one at a time. When people asked for her recipe, she gladly gave it. It wasn't about the ingredients, however; it was in the handling of the dough. The secret was to handle it as little as possible, fingering it just enough to break up the fat, adding the smallest amount of ice water, a drop at a time, then quickly rounding the dough into a ball the size of a large orange to chill in the icebox. The perfect dough for rolling the perfect crust, thin and flaky. It was the touch that made it special. And Thomas' prize-winning cherries, of course."

I grew up where are many orchards and farms in the surrounding area, and so I had great interest in The Cherry Harvest. It will have you craving a homemade cherry pie after reading it. I will post a full review after the Beach Club Book Club discusses it.