Summer Reading Picks

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

Memorial Day is past and now Summer Reading Season is upon us. This month’s column is filled with suggestions for books for everyone to read at the beach or on your front porch.

For the person who enjoys a good family story, J. Ryan Stradal’s new novel, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club tells the story of four generations of women involved with the running of their family supper club in a small town in Minnesota. Some of them take to the family business, others feel confined by it. You’ll feel dropped right into this community. Stradal never misses, his books are must-reads for me. 

Susie Luo’s debut novel, Paper Names tells of the immigrant experience seeking the American dream. Tony leaves his job as an engineer in China to give his family a better life in New York City where he now works as a doorman. The lives of Tony, his young daughter Tammy, and Oliver, a lawyer who lives in the building where Tony works, collide after a violent incident. 

If Historical Fiction is your favorite genre, Luis Alberto Urrea’s Good Night, Irene, a story about women who worked for the Red Cross in Europe during WWII, is inspired by his own’s mother experiences. 

Kristin Harmel’s The Paris Daughter is set in 1939 Paris where a young mother forced to flee the Nazis entrusts her daughter to her best friend. Her return after the war leads to complications.  

Lisa See’s Lady Tan’s Circle of Women is also inspired by a true story, this one about a female physician in 15th century China who undertook medical care for women when no one cared about them. 

Mysteries and thrillers are always great beach reads. William Landay’s All That Is Mine I Carry With Me begins when a mother disappears and her husband, a defense attorney, is suspected but never charged in her disappearance. Her raises their three children alone and when her remains are found 20 years later, their children must decide if is he is guilty or not. 

Dennis Lehane’s new novel Small Mercies is set in Boston during the summer of the busing protests of the 1970s. When a teen girl goes missing the same time that a young Black man is killed in the subway, her tough Irish mother will stop at nothing to find her, including running up against the most dangerous mobsters in town. (This one has raw and offensive language, as well as violence, appropriate for the time and subject.) 

Liv Constantine’s The Senator’s Wife tells the story of a DC power couple. Sloane is a philanthropist married to a Senator, and when complications from her lupus become challenging they hire an assistant. As Sloane’s health deteriorates, she begins suspect her assistant is up to something nefarious. This one has twists galore. 

Romance novels and sunshine go together and this season the queen of summer beach reads Elin Hilderbrand is back with The Five-Star Weekend. This one celebrates friendship as Hollis, a popular food blogger, invites her best friend from each stage of her life to join her on a five-star weekend. It doesn’t go as smoothly as she hoped.

Susan Wigg’s Welcome to Beach Town begins when the town’s elite high school valedictorian, a scholarship student, reveals a town secret during her speech that tears the town apart. When she returns to the town years later, will everyone welcome her back and forget why she left or is she still a pariah? 

For people who prefer Nonfiction, Helen Ellis’ collection of humorous essays, Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge, celebrates life with her loving husband as they navigate the Covid lockdown in New York City. The hilarious essay 'An Email To Our Cat Sitter’ is worth the price of the book alone. Give this one to your favorite couple celebrating an anniversary in June. 

Bethanne Patrick’s memoir Life B- Overcoming Double Depression recounts the book critic’s lifelong struggle to deal with depression. When she hits her fifties, Patrick finally receives a diagnosis and the help she needs to become healthy for herself and her two daughters. 

Summer always brings a big biography, and this year it’s Jonathan Eig’s King-A Life a 688-page comprehensive look at the life of Martin Luther King Jr.  This one has garnered much critical praise. 

I hope there is something here for you to read this summer, email me with your summer picks.

Friday 5ive- April 28, 2023

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. It's been more than a few weeks since my last Friday 5ive post, it's been a busy time for me between work and a week off to Florida.

1) Speaking of Florida, we had dear friends visit us and we made our first trip to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. It was incredible! The highlight of the museum is a huge building where they have recreated a miniature circus setting from days gone by. Starting with the circus trains pulling into a train station, and through the set ups of dozens of tents, hundreds of animals, and thousands of miniature people, you walk around and see the amazing village the circus creates when it pulled into town. Whatever they need- from multiple barber shops, blacksmiths, carpenter shops, makeup and costume shops, performers' tents- they bring from town to town. It's truly a remarkable sight to see, I can't imagine how many hours went into creating this. We will be going back when we can spend more time there. 

The animals

Backstage- you can see the women's costumes on the left

Under the big top!

You can visit Ca'dZan, John & Mable Ringling's former mansion

2)  Spring is busting out all over the Upper East Side this week. It's so delightful to see all these bright flowers blooming. 

3) A few weeks back I saw Sweeney Todd on Broadway. Josh Groban plays wonderfully against his sunny personality as the demon barber of Fleet Street in this production, and Annaleigh Ashford gives her best performance on the stage yet as Mrs. Lovett, the owner of the meat pie establishment who loves Sweeney Todd and becomes the beneficiary of Sweeney Todd's revenge scheme. The show is a dark one in tone (obviously), and I had forgotten how many great songs came from this Stephen Sondheim creation- 'Johanna' (my favorite), 'Pretty Women' and 'Not While I'm Around' among them. Ruthie Anne Miles is brilliant as the Beggar Woman and Gaten Matarazzo as Tobias are also standouts in this great cast. I would bet on Ashford to win another Tony for her performance, one that the late great Angela Lansbury won a Tony for her iconic performance and later recreated in the movie. This one rates a must-see. 

4) We watched the new Netflix series The Diplomat in two sittings. If The West Wing and The Americans had a baby, it would be The Diplomat. Keri Russell (Felicity, The Americans) plays Katherine Wyler, a diplomat who is packing to return to the American embassy in Kabul to try and get Afghanistanis who helped the Americans get out safely. She is suddenly summoned to become the new American ambassador to the United Kingdom, a post that she is unprepared to take. She is having marital difficulties with her husband Hal, a man involved in government politics who likes to stir up trouble, including for his wife. When a British warship is hit in the Gulf and 41 sailors are killed, the Prime Minister wants to militarily retaliate against the Russians who evidence suggest is behind it. Katherine and the Foreign Minister of the UK team up to try and find out who was behind the bombing, and Katherine discovers the real reason she has been chosen for her new posting. The acting is fantastic, especially Russell and Rufus Sewell as Hal, and the storyline is timely and propulsive.  (I also like that Keri Russell looks like a woman in her forties, not a plastic faced doll.) I am proud that I was able to guess what was going to happen in the last ten minutes of the season finale and can't wait for season 2. Another highly recommended from us. 

5) I ended up reading three books with similiar themes- Dennis Lehane's Small Mercies and Don Winslow's City on Fire and the sequel City of Dreams. Dennis Lehane's novel is set in 1974 Boston at the beginning of the busing protests. Mary Pat Fennessy has lived in the Southie projects her whole life. Her first husband died, her second husband left her, her Vietnam vet son came back from war addicted to drugs and died of an overdose and now it's just her and her teenage daughter Jules. When Jules fails to come home one night, Mary Pat discovers that her daughter is involved with the gangsters from the Irish mob who run Southie. On the same night Jules disappears, a young Black man was killed by subway train, the son of a woman who works with Mary Pat at a nursing home. Mary Pat is fierce and determined to find out what happened to her daughter and if she has to break heads and cross the leader of the Irish mob (think Whitey Bulger) to do so, she will. Lehane drops the reader into 1974 Boston and the language and violence is authentic and disturbingly realistic. I remember seeing the busing story on the news every night as a teen and it comes off the page vividly in Small Mercies. I highly recommend it. 

Don Winslow's City on Fire tells the story of the Irish and Italian mobs in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1980s. They co-exist somewhat peacefully until a woman comes between two hotheaded men on either side. Danny Ryan is the protagonist, a midlevel man in the Irish mob who, although he does his best to avert a war that he knows one side will lose badly, ends up smack in the middle, with the FBI on their tail as well. Once again, the language and violence is constant and disturbing, but authentic. I couldn't read this book fast enough, it reminded me of Mario Puzo's The Godfather, and Winslow's analogies to Greek mythology begin each chapter. This series has streaming miniseries written all over it. This is another recommend from me. 

The second book in the series City of Dreams finds Danny and his crew on the run where they land in Hollywood. Danny finds himself a job as a consultant on a movie about the Providence mob wars and he becomes involved with the lead actress. The action is once again propulsive as Danny and his crew try to avoid the Italian mob coming for them. I liked the first half of the novel novel better than the second half, I wasn't totally on board with the choices Danny made. 

Have a safe, healthy week, until next time.

Two Novels About Marriage

Reprinted from the Citizen:

Marriage is a topic that has been covered extensively in books, from self-help books to romance novels to literary fiction to mysteries and thrillers. Today’s column reviews two novels with the theme of marriage, albeit with a slightly different take.

In Dennis Lehane’s newest novel “Since We Fell”, Rachel Childs is a local TV reporter sent to cover Haiti after a disaster. Her reporting earns her a chance at a network TV assignment, but when she has an on-air breakdown, she loses her opportunity and her husband leaves her. 

She becomes a recluse, rarely leaving her apartment. She reconnects with Brian, a man she knew as a private investigator while looking for information about her birth father. Brian rescues her from a man in a bar, and they begin to date.

Brian is patient and loving with Rachel, and soon they marry. One day Rachel sees Brian coming out of hotel in Boston when he was supposed to be in London, and she begins to question if he is the man she believes him to be.

The beginning of this fast-paced novel hooks you right away. “On a Tuesday in May, in her thirty-seventh year, Rachel shot her husband dead. He stumbled backward with an odd look of confirmation on his face, as if some part of him had always known she’d do it.” How can you not read on?

“Since We Fell” packs so much in this fast-paced novel. At first it’s about a young woman looking for her father. Then the story moves to cover Rachel’s breakdown and her subsequent marriage to a seemingly wonderful man. The last third of the book is a straight-out thriller, as Rachel uncovers the truth about her husband and fights to stay alive.

Fans of “The Girl On The Train” and “In A Dark, Dark Wood” will love “Since We Fell”, and I liked it better than those; Lehane is a superb writer who knows how to write terrific characters while ratcheting up the tension.

For a more optimistic view of marriage, Deanna Lynn Sletten’s new novel, “One Wrong Turn” tells the story of Jess and Clay. The book begins when Jess is rushing home and has a car accident that results in her becoming comatose. 

Jess is living with their two daughters, twelve year-old Maddie and seven year-old Jilly, working to open a bed and breakfast in a home left her by her grandmother. Clay is summoned to the hospital, where he sees his comatose wife and two daughters for the first time in two years.

The story goes back and forth in time, beginning with the first meeting of Jess, a waitress in beach bar and Clay, a guitarist in a rock band. At first Jess wants nothing to do with a musician, but Clay wins her over.

They marry, and Jess becomes pregnant with Maddie. Clay’s career begins to take off, which means he is off touring with bands, in addition to becoming a highly respected and in-demand studio musician. Musicians like to drink, and Clay begins to drink too much.

Jess puts up with Clay’s drinking until she returns home one day and finds him passed out when he is supposed to be caring for their baby. Clay’s attempts at sobriety include stints at rehab facilities, and he manages to stay sober for periods of times.

Eventually Jess has had enough and she takes the girls and moves away when she inherits her grandmother’s house. They build a life for themselves, and make friends, until the accident.

Maddie is old enough to remember good and bad times with her father, but young Jilly doesn’t remember much. Clay vows to the girls that he will care for them, but Maddie fears they will be abandoned by Clay once again. In addition, there is the question of whether Jess will ever come out of her coma. 

“One Wrong Turn” is the story of a marriage that tries to overcome the illness of addiction, and what happens when the unimaginable occurs. It’s beautifully written, and the characters, particularly Maddie and Clay, are ones that readers will identify and empathize with.

Sletten’s last novel, “Finding Libbie” was about love, marriage and mental illness, and she approaches her books with such sensitivity, I admit to tearing up more than once while reading her. Fans of Elin Hilderbrand's books should seek out Deanna Lee Sletten’s books.

“Since We Fell” by Dennis Lehane- A

Published by Ecco

Hardcover, $26.99, 432 pages

“One Wrong Turn” by Deanna Lynn Sletten- A-

Published by Lake Union Publishing

Trade paperback, $14.95, 204 pages