Two books featuring strong women at a crossroads

Reprinted from auburnpub.com:

The leaves are turning, the weather is cooler, it’s getting dark out earlier, and now we have more time to stay inside and read. This month’s Book Report features two books about strong women facing difficult times in their lives.


Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope WWII mysteries is one of the few series I will always read, and her latest book, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a fantastic standalone novel. The last Maggie Hope novel, The Hollywood Spy, had Maggie in WWII Los Angeles, where she tangled with Nazis. Mother Daughter Traitor Spy tells the story of Veronica and her mother Violet during WWII. 

When Veronica makes a bad personal choice, she loses her job in New York, and she and her widowed mother move to Los Angeles, closer to her uncle. Veronica unintentionally finds herself as secretary for someone who is heavily involved in the Nazi movement in the United States.


Meanwhile, Violet's lovely embroidery catches the eye of a Nazi leader's wife, and soon she is designing and sewing clothes for many of the women's friends. Horrified by the things they are hearing, Veronica and her mother go to law enforcement and end up working as spies for the US military.


I found myself wanting to know more about this time period in Los Angeles after reading The Hollywood Spy, and was so pleased to see that Susan Elia MacNeal was continuing to tell us more about this intriguing time in history in Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, based on the lives of a real mother-daughter team.


As I read this terrific story, I could not help but see the connections between what was happening politically in the 1940s and what is happening in our country in the last few years, and that adds to the importance of this book. I didn’t realize how many followers the Nazi had in America prior to and during WWII, it was eye-opening and honestly frightening. Mother Daughter Traitor Spy is a must-read for historical fiction fans.


Another author whose work I never miss is Anne Leigh Parrish. Her previous novels (Our Love Will Light the World, The Amendment and A Winter Night) dealt with families living in the Finger Lakes region in contemporary settings.


Her latest novel, An Open Door, is an historical novel set in the aftermath of WWII. When we meet Edith she is a young woman working at the United Nations in New York City, and married to Walt who is studying to be a lawyer and living in Boston. 

Edith enjoys her freedom working in New York and living with her husband's widowed aunt. Many people question why a married woman would choose to live and work in a different city than her husband, including her husband who pressures Edith to return to Boston.


After having watched her mother being stifled by her marriage to Edith’s overbearing father, she did not want to live a similar life. When she returns to Boston, Edith intends to continues her PhD studies in literature, but women at that time were discouraged from such a higher level of education. She saw that “the problem was what the world expected women to be, which was always less than a man.”

Unhappy in her marriage and with her life in general, Edith “wished that knowing where you didn’t belong meant knowing where you did.” When an opportunity to buy the neighborhood bookstore (along with two other people comes along), she sees this as a chance to do something more meaningful and fulfilling with her life. Edith’s life begins to revolve around the bookstore, and as someone who works in a bookstore, I so enjoyed reading about the joys, and the trials and tribulations of owning a bookstore.


No one writes characters better than Anne Leigh Parrish, and Edith is no exception. Parrish takes the reader into the heart and head of her characters so brilliantly that we relate and understand them, even when they do things with which we disagree. Edith is not perfect, and she does things that people will find objectionable.


Parrish writes so beautifully, I found myself returning time and again to her words, like this quote from her mother- “One thing I’ve learned is that kind people love kindly; careless people love carelessly; cruel people love cruelly.” She always gives her readers something deep to ponder.  I give An Open Door my highest recommendation.


Mother Daughter Traitor Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal- A

Published by Bantam

Hardcover, $28, 336 pages


An Open Door by Anne Leigh Parrish- A+

Published by Unsolicited Press

Trade paperback, $17/ Kindle $6.99, 267 pages

An Open Door by Anne Leigh Parrish

An Open Door by Anne Leigh Parrish

Published by Unsolicited Press ISBN 9781956692341

Trade paperback, $17.99, 267 pages

An author whose work I never miss is Anne Leigh Parrish. Her previous novels (Our Love Will Light the World, 

The Amendment and A Winter Night) dealt with families living in the Finger Lakes region in contemporary settings. 

Her latest novel, An Open Door, is an historical novel set in the aftermath of WWII. When we meet Edith she is a young woman working at the United Nations in New York City, and married to Walt who is studying to be a lawyer and living in Boston. 

Edith enjoys her freedom working in New York and living with her husband's widowed aunt. Many people question why a married woman would choose to live and work in a different city than her husband, including her husband who pressures Edith to return to Boston.

After having watched her mother being stifled by her marriage to Edith’s overbearing father, she did not want to live a similar life. When she returns to Boston, Edith intends to continues her PhD studies in literature, but women at that time were discouraged from such a higher level of education. She saw that “the problem was what the world expected women to be, which was always less than a man.”

Unhappy in her marriage and with her life in general, Edith “wished that knowing where you didn’t belong meant knowing where you did.” When an opportunity to buy the neighborhood bookstore (along with two other people comes along), she sees this as a chance to do something more meaningful and fulfilling with her life. Edith’s life begins to revolve around the bookstore, and as someone who works in a bookstore, I so enjoyed reading about the joys, and the trials and tribulations of owning a bookstore.

No one writes characters better than Anne Leigh Parrish, and Edith is no exception. Parrish takes the reader into the heart and head of her characters so brilliantly that we relate and understand them, even when they do things with which we disagree. Edith is not perfect, and she does things that people will find objectionable.

Parrish writes so beautifully, I found myself returning time and again to her words, like this quote from her mother- “One thing I’ve learned is that kind people love kindly; careless people love carelessly; cruel people love cruelly.” She always gives her readers something deep to ponder.  I give An Open Door my highest recommendation.

Thanks to TLC for putting me on Anne Leigh Parrish's tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Review tour schedule:

Monday, October 3rd: @whatlizziereads

Monday, October 3rd: @spaceonthebookcase

Wednesday, October 5th: BookNAround

Thursday, October 6th: @thebphiles

Friday, October 7th: @abduliacoffeebookaddict23

Monday, October 10th: Girl Who Reads

Tuesday, October 11th: @mom_loves_reading

Wednesday, October 12th: @suzylew_bookreview

Thursday, October 13th: @fashionablyfifty

Friday, October 14th: Kahakai Kitchen

Monday, October 17th: @lindahamiltonwriter on TikTok

Tuesday, October 18th: Bookchickdi

Wednesday, October 19th: @nurse_bookie

Wednesday, October 19th: Books, Cooks, Looks

Thursday, October 20th: @pickagoodbook

Thursday, October 20th: @tammyreads62

Monday, October 24th: Bibliotica

Tuesday, October 25th: @cmtloveswineandbooks

Wednesday, October 26th: @wovenfromwords

Thursday, October 27th: Run Wright

Friday 5ive- October 7, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. Like everyone else last week we were glued to out TV sets watching Hurricane Ian as it headed for south Florida. We have been thinking about everyone who lost so much, it was just devastating.

1) After reading Madeline Martin's fascinating novel, The Librarian Spy, set in WWII Lisbon, Portugal, I felt it necessary to look for a local Portuguese restaurant that makes Pastéis de Nata. I walked by Le Réveil Coffee & Bakery, and ordered a few of the tasty custard-filled breakfast pastries. They were everything I expected after reading (drooling) about them in the book. I will be back.

2)  I completed two virtual bike rides on Conqueror Challenges in the last few weeks. The first one was a long one- 828 miles along the Ring Road in Iceland. It took me 107 days from start to finish on my daily Peloton bike rides, only missing a week or two due to vacation and illness. The second one was a short one, the 125 mile Florida Keys ride, which only took me two weeks. Next up are two England rides.

3)  Speaking of Peloton, I took a hugely entertaining spin class featuring music from the Broadway show Moulin Rouge. Bradley Rose and Sam Yo teamed up to lead the class, which I have taken three times so far. For me, the best classes feature music I can sing along to. The music from that class has been on repeat on my Apple library while I work on my computer. (It's on now as I type and yes, I am singing.)

4)  I started watching Reboot, a sitcom on Hulu. The co-creator of Modern Family Steve Levitan's new project is about the reboot of sitcom from the 1980s. Rachel Bloom  (My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) stars as the new showrunner and leads a brilliant cast consisting of Paul Reiser as the executive producer from the 1980's version who wants back in, and Keegan-Michael Key,  Judy Greer, and Johnny Knoxville as the original cast members who reunite after some tough years. I laugh from beginning to end of each episode, and whenever there is a scene set in the writer's room featuring the original writers from the 1980s version and the new generation of young writers, I laugh even harder. Those scenes are so inappropriate and hilarious. Don't miss this one. 

5) I've tried to be better about reading every night, but sometimes I'm just too tired. I finished three good books in the last few weeks. Carter Bays, co-creator of How I Met Your Mother has written a creative novel titled The Mutual Friend. I bought this one off the Staff Recommends shelf at Bookstore1 in Sarasota, Florida. A group of people living in New York City are interconnected through various relationships, and the book is narrated by a narrator not revealed to the reader until the end. There is a lot here about the dangers of social media and our obsession with the constant presence of our phones. It took me awhile to get into this one with its multiple characters, but once I did I was hooked, and the end will make you smile.

 Moving from the big city to a small town in Texas, I read Bobby Finger's delightful 

The Old Place because it has garnered so many rave reviews. Mary Alice is a teacher forced into retirement who lives for her morning coffee sessions with her neighbor, Ellie. Ellie and Mary Alice have a special connection as they both lost their teenage sons. Mary Alice is determined to make life miserable for Josie, her replacement at school, a young woman from New York City who married the scion of the town's wealthy family. Anyone from a small town will enjoy the setting and relate to the characters living there. The preparations for the big town festival fundraiser had me laughing and nodding my head in recognition. Although billed as a humorous story, there is some sadness here, just like in real life.  

I never miss a book from author Anne Leigh Parrish. Her previous novels  (Our Love Could Light the World, The Amendment, A Winter Night) have dealt with families living in the Finger Lakes region where I'm from, and have contemporary settings. Her latest novel, An Open Door, is an historical novel set in the aftermath of WWII. The main character is Edith, a young woman working at the UN in New York City and married to a man studying to be a lawyer and living in Boston. Edith enjoys her freedom in New York living with her husband's widowed aunt, so her decision to return to her husband in Boston is fraught with complications. She feels stifled with her life as a housewife, and when an opportunity to buy the neighborhood bookstore along with two other people comes along she sees this as a chance to do more with her life. No one writes characters better than Anne Leigh Parrish, and Edith is no exception. Parrish takes the reader into the heart and head of her characters so brilliantly that we relate and understand them, even when they do things with which we disagree. My full review posts here on October 18th. 

Have a safe, healthy week, and don't forget to get your flu shot. 

More excellent summer reads from my favorite authors

Reprinted from the Citizen:

As summer rolls on, there are so many excellent books just waiting to pop into your beach bag, and here I’ll cover a few I have recently enjoyed.

Susan Elia MacNeal continues the saga of Maggie Hope in The Hollywood Spy. Maggie Hope is an American who worked as Winston Churchill’s secretary in the first book in the series, The Prime Minister’s Secretary. Her skills led her to become a spy for the British during WWII, working for the elite SOE agency. 

After stints in London, Paris, Berlin, and Scotland, Maggie goes to 1943 Los Angeles to help her former boyfriend John, an RAF pilot training American flyers. John’s fianceé drowned and he suspects foul play. Maggie agrees to investigate.

The most interesting part of this terrific tenth entry in the Maggie Hope series is learning all about Los Angeles during this time. It contained a large number of Nazi supporters, who went underground once the US entered the war. The Ku Klux Klan picked up where the Nazis left off, with racism against Jewish people, Blacks, and Latin people running rampant, including acts of violence against those groups.

MacNeal immerses the reader right into Los Angeles of that time, and you can feel all her research right on the page, as established by her bibliography at the end of the book. It’s also fun to see so many real people drop in, including Walt Disney, Linus Pauling, Howard Hughes, Cab Calloway, Hattie McDaniel, and more.

I highly recommend “The Hollywood Spy” for anyone who enjoys Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series.

Laura Lippman pays homage to Stephen King’s book Misery in her novel, Dream Girl. Gerry Andersen is an author who has yet to match the mega-success of his first novel, “Dream Girl”. When Gerry takes a serious fall in his Baltimore apartment, he is bedridden and dependent on the care of his young assistant and the nurses who come to his apartment. 

One night Gerry receives a disturbing phone call from a woman who claims she is the real person he based his novel on. He knows this cannot be true, the character was a figment of his imagination.

When the phone calls continue, neither his overnight nurse nor his assistant hears the phone ringing. When he sees a woman in his room late at night and calls out, the nurse comes running but no one is there, and the security cameras for the building show that no one came into his apartment. 

Is Gerry losing his mind or is someone messing with him? Could it be one of his ex-wives? The book goes back and forth in time, and we get a real feel for the character of Gerry, who he is and where he comes from. Fans of Lippman’s Tess Monaghan PI series will enjoy the cameo by Tess as Gerry looks for help to find answers.

I read Dream Girl in one day, I could not put this one down.

Anne Leigh Parrish continues her wonderful series about the Dugan family in her novel, A Winter Night. We first met the Dugans in Our Love Could Light The World, a series of linked stories, and their story continued in the novels, The Amendment and Maggie’s Ruse. 

Oldest daughter Angie takes center stage in this beautifully written story. Angie is 34, working as a social worker in adult care/nursing home. She is seeing Matt, a bartender and friend of her brother, and so far it’s going well.

After some disastrous relationships, Angie has trust issues. She is seeing a therapist to help her work through it. Angie has always been the one to care for her father, a recovering alcoholic who is remarried, but as his life seems to veering off course Angie is called in to help him once again.

It’s great to reconnect with the Dugan family, and Parrish writes dialogue that just crackles with honesty, like mother Lavinia saying that her ex-husband’s “promises are never false. They’re just seldom kept.” Or when Lavinia says “if you want your marriage to work, you have to rise up to meet it.” (Lavinia gets the best lines.)

The Dugan family lives in the Finger Lakes region, and readers will be able to relate to many of settings and character.  And with the extreme heat we have been experiencing, a book set in a central New York winter is a welcome distraction. A Winter Night is a moving character study, and I highly recommend it. 

A Winter Night by Anne Leigh Parrish

A Winter Night by Anne Leigh Parrish

Published by Unsolicited Press ISBN 9781950730605

Trade paperback, $16. 244 pages

I was first introduced to the Dugan family in Anne Leigh Parrish's book of linked short stories, Our Love Could Light the World. (My review here) The Dugan family story continued in the novel The Amendment (My review here) I loved both books, and so I really looked forward to a third meeting with the Dugans in A Winter Night.

A Winter Night focuses on 34 year-old Angie Dugan, who works as a social worker at a retirement/nursing home. Angie helps families and residents adjust to a new life. She's good at her job, even if it is not exactly what she wants to be doing with her life.

Angie is dating Matt, a younger bartender who is a real people person, a useful trait for his profession. Their relationship is fairly new, and Matt is a friend of one of Angie's younger brothers, which means they spend a lot of time with her brother and his girlfriend.

Trust is an issue for Angie in relationships. She's only had three serious relationships, and each ended on not great terms. Angie's mom Lavinia left the family for a time when the children were young, and then divorced her alcoholic husband Potter and married a wealthier man who later died after being struck by lightning on the golf course. Angie has always helped pick up the pieces of her father's life, even after he married a successful realtor. 

Parrish's beautiful writing gives us such insight into Angie, as seen in this passage about Matt's apartment building:

"It reeks of the temporary, the rootless, somewhere people stay on their way to somewhere either better or worse. She's only channeling her own experience, though, of moving so often when she was growing up. Her family never seemed to stay anywhere longer than a year."

Angie "was told her honesty was a weapon, a means to hand out judgment that was seldom unbiased. Her mother said she liked to beat people up with her words." She sees a therapist to try and have a better understanding of herself.

When Potter relapses and starts drinking again, Angie does not want to be pulled back into the caretaker role she undertook when she was younger. Although Potter promises to stop drinking, as Lavinia says, his "promises are never false. They're just seldom kept."

Reading A Winter Night felt like going back to your hometown and catching up with an old friend. The Dugans live near the Finger Lakes region where I grew up, and that connection drew me in once again. Like Angie, I also grew up as the oldest of five children, and the Christmas dinner scene with all the siblings with all the family dynamics that entails is so relatable.

I highly recommend A Winter Night. It can be read as a stand alone novel, but do yourself a favor and read the two earlier books to get a deeper appreciation of the arc of the Dugan family story. I hope we get to read more about the rest of the Dugans in further stories, as Angie's story reminded me how much I missed them.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Anne Leigh Parrish's tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Review tour:

Friday, June 4th: 5 Minutes for Books

Monday, June 7th: @jenniaahava

Tuesday, June 8th: BookNAround

Wednesday, June 9th: Eliot’s Eats

Thursday, June 10th: @reading_with_nicole

Friday, June 11th: Nurse Bookie and @nurse_bookie

Monday, June 14th: SusanLovesBooks

Tuesday, June 15th: Lit and Life

Wednesday, June 16th: Mom Loves Reading and @mom_loves_reading

Thursday, June 17th: Bookchickdi

Friday, June 18th: @fashionablyfifty

Monday, June 21st: Blunt Scissors Book Reviews and @bluntscissorsbookreviews

Tuesday, June 22nd: Openly Bookish

Thursday, June 24th: Run Wright and @karen_runwright

Friday, June 25th: Kahakai Kitchen

Monday, June 28th: Stranded in Chaos and @sarastrand9438

Wednesday, June 30th: Girl Who Reads

Thursday, July 1st: @lovelyplacebooks

    

Friday 5ive- June 11, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blogpost about five things that caught my attention this week.

1) I made a Costco trip this week, and there were so many people there for a weekday. My sister-in-law had these delicious Lemoncello Chocolate Almonds from Sconza Chocolates at a family gathering last week and I loved them. If you've been to Italy and enjoyed limoncello, these white chocolate covered almonds will take you right back there. They're my new obsession.

2) Speaking of Italy, we did a wine Zoom with a family Italian winery we visited two years ago. NostraVita combines their beautiful winery, with its gorgeous views of the hills of Montalcino, with owner Annabale and Elena's love of art and local history. When we received our shipment of wine this time, we also got a original drawing from their daughter Carlotta, who is is well respected artist. When we visited in 2019, we bought three of her paintings. 

3) I passed a big milestone this week on my Peloton bike- 1000 rides! My two sons (who were doing their 1200th and 1300th rides) and brother-in-law joined me on my favorite instructor Jenn Sherman's Sold Out Show Ride on Sunday morning. All of the songs were from live shows, and she played songs by four of my favorite artists- Fleetwood Mac (The Chain), Bruce Springsteen (Promised Land), Donna Summer (No More Tears) and I got a shout-out from Jenn during one of my all-time favorites, Heart's Crazy For You. 

4) Before Hamilton- The Musical became the juggernaut that it is, Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical In The Heights about the members of a neighborhood in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan surprised everyone by winning the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical. When I saw it, I thought it was the best musical I had seen. The movie version of In The Heights is now playing on HBOMax until July 11th and it is spectacular. It's about the lives, loves, and dreams of a community and the everything about this movie is fantastic. Some of the standouts include the song 96,000 (filmed at a local public pool that rivals anything ever done in Esther Williams' films), the joyous choreography by Christopher Scott, brilliant direction by John M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) and fantastic performances by Anthony Ramos as Usnavi the bodega owner (a star-making turn) and Olga Merediz as Abuela Claudia (whose song Paciencia y Fé is astonishing). This is the perfect movie for summer, the joy we need now. 

5)  I read two terrific books this week. First up, Anne Leigh Parrish's A Winter Night (set near the Finger Lakes region where I grew up) continues the story of the Dugan family, this time focusing on 34 year-old Angie. She works as a social worker at a retirement home/nursing home, dealing with families and helping new residents adjust. Angie is dating Matt, a bartender, her first serious relationship in a long time after a series of bad ones, but trust issues get in the way for her. Reading it felt like catching up with old friends (we met the Dugans in Our Love Could Light the World, and continued with their story in The Amendment). These are characters that feel like real people, people who live in your neighborhood. My full review posts here on June 17th.

Matthew Norman's new novel, All Together Now is a story of friendship. Four friends who were kicked out of their private Baltimore High School years ago reunite after the most successful of the group, hedge fund billionaire Robbie, invites them for a weekend at a Rehoboth Beach mansion. Wade is about to get evicted from his New York City apartment after his second novel fails to attract attention from publishers. The woman he loved in school, Blair, is a mom of two young children with a marriage on the rocks who gave up her artistic endeavors. Cat is a morning television show assistant producer in Los Angeles who doesn't know her clandestine relationship with the married female host of the show is about to blow up. The world knows Robbie as a math genius, philanthropist, and astute businessman but they don't know that he is dying, and neither do his friends. What else is Robbie hiding from them? I'm a big Matthew Norman fan, (Domestic Violets, We're All Damaged, Last Couple Standing) he puts his characters in interesting situations, and he writes some pointedly funny stuff, and although this one is more serious, it's still a great book. It's got a Big Chill vibe. (80's movie reference there).

Have a safe week, I hope you're able to get out and enjoy the nice weather now that things are returning to normal.

The Amendment by Anne Leigh Parrish

The Amendment by Anne Leigh Parrish
Published by Unsolicited Press ISBN 9781947021099
Trade paperback, $17, 336 pages

We first met Lavinia Dugan's family in Anne Leigh Parrish's fantastic book of linked stories Our Love Could Light the World. (My 5-star review is here.)

We catch up with Lavinia in Anne Leigh Parrish's marvelous novel, The Amendment, where Lavinia now-Starkhurt has to deal with the sudden death of her older husband Chip, struck down by lightning on the golf course. Chip was Lavinia's second husband and generous stepfather to her five children.

Chip loved Lavinia, and Lavinia loved Chip, even if he didn't excite her as much as her ex-husband Potter. When she and Potter were married, he couldn't hold down a job and he drank too much. Chip owned his own company, where Lavinia worked before she married Chip, and provided a lifestyle for Lavinia that enabled her to lead a life of leisure.

After Chip's death, Lavinia decides to leave her Finger Lakes region home and take a road trip across the country. She needs to get away from Mel, Chip's golfing buddy who loves Lavinia, and Alma, Chip's housekeeper who adored Chip (but not Lavinia). After her daughter Angie's attempt to get Lavinia to participate in group grief therapy goes terribly awry (Lavinia says some very inappropriate things), Lavinia hops in her car and takes off.

Along her travels, Lavinia picks up random items as totems of a sort- a stuffed teddy bear, a thimble collection she finds at garage sale, and a vase for the fresh flowers she buys every day. She stays at small motels along the way that have a diner nearby.

She meets people on her journey, listens to their stories and tries to help them, which is unlike her. She gives rides to people who need her help: a woman who was abandoned by her boyfriend at the laundromat, a teenager on the run from his uncles.

Lavinia stays for awhile at the home of her ex-sister-in-law. Patty and her husband Murph take her in and Lavinia stays for a few weeks, working for a few hours at a flower shop, trying to get a volunteer job as a driver for social services (until a previous DUI is discovered), and even has an affair with a cowboy.

I found Lavinia to be a fascinating, multi-dimensional character. She reminded me a bit of Olive Kitteridge from Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize novel of the same name. She is prickly and speaks her mind whether people want to hear it or not. She wasn't the best mother, maybe not affectionate enough. She wasn't the best wife to Chip, realizing that she married two men who were afraid of her. Some people call her a "straight-shooter", and she describes herself as a bitch.

I powered through The Amendment, turning the pages furiously because I couldn't get enough of Lavinia. She is funny and fierce and truly one of the most interesting characters I have found in a long time. I thoroughly enjoyed taking to the road with Lavinia and I highly recommend The Amendment.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Anne Leigh Parrish's tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Instagram Tour

Monday, October 1st: @readvoraciously

Tuesday, October 2nd: @read.write.coffee

Wednesday, October 3rd: @brookesbooksandbrews

Thursday, October 4th: @happiestwhenreading

Friday, October 5th: @novelgossip

Saturday, October 6th: @brokenteepee

Review Tour

Tuesday, October 9th: @readingwithmere

Wednesday, October 10th: @lavieestbooks

Thursday, October 11th: Girl Who Reads

Friday, October 12th: Wining Wife

Monday, October 15th: Palmer’s Page Turners

Tuesday, October 16th: Novel Gossip

Wednesday, October 17th: BookNAround

Thursday, October 18th: Bookchickdi

Monday, October 22nd: Seaside Book Nook

Wednesday, October 24th: Run Wright

Thursday, October 25th: Patricia’s Wisdom

By The Wayside Stories by Anne Leigh Parrish

By the Wayside- Stories by Anne Leigh Parrish
Published by Unsolicited Press ISBN 9780998087238
Trade paperback, $16.99, 238 pages

A few years back I read a collection of linked stories, Our Love Could Light The World, by Anne Leigh Parrish. The stories were about a family with five children, set in the Finger Lakes region of New York state. Since I grew up in a family with five children in that region, I had to read it.

I loved the book, and it reminded me of Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning linked story collection, Olive Kitteridge, but I enjoyed Parrish's book even more.

Parrish is back with a more traditional collection of stories, By the Wayside. Instead of linked stories with the same characters appearing in the stories, these stories have similiar themes. Many of the stories have appeared in other publications as well.

The eighteen stories in By The Wayside deal mainly with young women facing a crossroads in life. These sassy women are dealing with dead parents, mental illness, sibling animosity, disappointment, marriage, and unrequited love. Many of these women are lonely, and some have adult responsibility beyond their young years.

In the first story, An Angel Within, Leet is a twenty year-old woman whose parents are gone. She is responsible for her two younger sisters, a sixteen year-old obsessed with nail polish, and a thirteen year-old whose obsession with beautiful clothes and handbags sometimes led to shoplifting.

Leet believes that an angel lives inside her; it is the only way she can get through her days at her lousy job as a grocery bagger in a town that requires a two-bus communte, only to return home to deal with her sisters.

The second story, How She Was Found, is one of the strongest. Fiona is on an archeological dig with her male professor and three male fellow students who treat her with disdain until she makes a significant find. I particularly liked Fiona's spunk. (Lou Grant would not like it- Mary Tyler Moore Show shout-out.)

Short stories require that the author get right to the point with her words, there is no room for flowerly descriptions. Parrish excels in that, using indelible phrases and sentences that set the mood and character in the reader's mind, like these:

In the terrific Where Love Lies, she writes "Dana figured nothing had been her fault. Bruce figured everything had been his fault." You learn a lot about that married couple in one sentence.

When Anna and her newlywed husband Paul move to the dusty town of Huron, South Dakota in 1920 in An Act of Concealment, Paul "thought the place he looked at nothing like home. His heart sank a bit. Anne's didn't. To her, home was an idea, not a place." I absolutely loved that passage, and again we know who these people are immediately.

When Anna says to another man that she believes marriage causes a kind of blindness, he tells her that "marriage alters one's vision... I mean that he doesn't see you well enough and (that) you see him too clearly."

Another story I loved was The Lillian Girl, about a teen who runs away from her disinterested parents and finds a woman looking for her daughter. It's the last story, and a fitting end to the this wonderful collection.

I found that I enjoyed the stories that were longer, the stories that were but a few pages seemed to end too abruptly for me. I recommend By the Wayside for those looking for a good short story collection, written beautifully. It's a perfect one-day read, but one that you'll contemplate much longer.

My review of Our Love Could Light The World is here.

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

Anne Leigh Parrish’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, April 3rd: Dwell in Possibility

Wednesday, April 5th: Patricia’s Wisdom

Thursday, April 6th: Lit and Life – author guest post

Monday, April 10th: Bibliotica

Wednesday, April 12th: Mama Vicky Says

Thursday, April 13th: Bibliophiliac

Monday, April 17th: Books ‘n Tea

Wednesday, April 19th: Susan Peterson

Thursday, April 20th: Dreaming Big

Monday, April 24th: BookNAround

Tuesday, April 25th: Bookchickdi

Wednesday, April 26th: Maureen Downing

Thursday, April 27th: Lovely Bookshelf on the Wall

Monday, May 1st: 100 Pages a Day – author guest post

Wednesday, May 3rd: Good Girl Gone Redneck

Thursday, May 4th: Seaside Booknook

Friday, May 5th: Readaholic Zone