Tom Lake

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. I found this book

to be entertaining.  Lara's story unfolds in a way that brings surprises along the way.  

 

The Plot

 This book has a great many twists and turns.....a book within a book.  It was a book that drew the reader in and was read quickly as I thought about what was happening next.  Do not read any more if you have not read the book nor watched the movie as I am going to ruin the end for you if you read on.  I did not like the end of the book.  I did not like seeing Diana/Anna win.  I wanted the main character of the book to jump up and vomit the drugs up and figure out how to move on.  I wanted him to send the e-mail to Diana/Anna confronting her with the fact that she had as much to loose as he did if the story behind the plot was released to the public.  It gave me a discontent to think that she was going to inherit all of his money and live on.....even though the plot did indeed belong to her.  

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

This book is a change of pace read recommended by Sarah Denman.  I started it last night and I like it a lot so far.  Here is the amazon Summary:

Li-yan and her family align their lives around the seasons and the farming of tea. There is ritual and routine, and it has been ever thus for generations. Then one day a jeep appears at the village gate - the first automobile any of them have seen - and a stranger arrives. 

In this remote Yunnan village, the stranger finds the rare tea he has been seeking and a reticent Akha people. In her biggest seller, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, See introduced the Yao people to her audience. Here she shares the customs of another Chinese ethnic minority, the Akha, whose world will soon change. 

Li-yan, one of the few educated girls on her mountain, translates for the stranger and is among the first to reject the rules that have shaped her existence. When she has a baby outside of wedlock rather than stand by tradition, she wraps her daughter in a blanket, with a tea cake hidden in her swaddling, and abandons her in the nearest city. 

After mother and daughter have gone their separate ways, Li-yan slowly emerges from the security and insularity of her village to encounter modern life while Haley grows up a privileged and well-loved California girl. Despite Haley's happy home life, she wonders about her origins, and Li-yan longs for her lost daughter. They both search for and find answers in the tea that has shaped their family's destiny for generations. 

A powerful story about a family separated by circumstances, culture, and distance, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little known region and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.

I am particularly drawn to the ideas in this book of young people making mistakes in their lives that are life-changing with parents who know that it is a mistake.  Because of the Akha tradition Li-yan can not go home after her life-changing mistakes.  But her mother is there to help her transition to a new life.  And the thought is that the mother is making a huge sacrifice for Li-yan to have a better life. And then the love between mothers and daughters is well portrayed as we switch back and forth between the US and China as the young mother works to receive training for life while her adopted orphan daughter in the US is intrigued by her birth family. 

The end which is perhaps a bit too neat comes full circle.  I am not sure that the reader could have stood to have had a different ending even when there are almost too many ends tied up neatly. 

In 2024 National Geographic published an article with amazing photos and maps of an area in China that has a history of tea cultivation.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/tea-ancient-forest-china?rid=1388778111614E693B9ED994FD4535E5&cmpid=org%3Dngp%3A%3Amc%3Dcrm-email%3A%3Asrc%3Dngp%3A%3Acmp%3Deditorial%3A%3Aadd%3DSunday_NL_PilotPhoto_20250105&loggedin=true&rnd=1736092339404 

 

Jefferson's Daughters

Thomas Jefferson had three daughters: Martha and Maria by his wife, Martha Wayles Jefferson, and Harriet by his slave Sally Hemings. Although the three women shared a father, the similarities end there. Martha and Maria received a fine convent school education while they lived with their father during his diplomatic posting in Paris. Once they returned home, however, the sisters found their options limited by the laws and customs of early America. 

Harriet Hemings, the daughter of a slave,  followed a different path. She escaped slavery—apparently with the assistance of Jefferson himself. Leaving Monticello behind, she boarded a coach and set off for a decidedly uncertain future.

 

For this groundbreaking triple biography, history scholar Catherine Kerrison has uncovered never-before-published documents written by the Jefferson sisters, as well as letters written by members of the Jefferson and Hemings families. The richly interwoven stories of these strong women and their fight to shape their own destinies shed new light on issues of race and gender that are still relevant today—and on the legacy of one of our most controversial Founding Fathers.  (from Amazon)

The first of the book deals with the hardships that Thomas Jefferson's wife bore during her marriage.  She had bad luck with pregnancies and lost children and died young.  Her husband was often absent.  However, she used her time to visit relatives and friends and her surviving two daughters were raised in the homes of people she loved while Monticello was never finished in her lifetime.  Much of Martha and Marie's childhood was spent at Eppington with her mother's sister's family and after Martha's death they lived there full time while Thomas Jefferson was in France.

Below is a 1888 map of Chesterfield County, Virginia showing the location of Eppington.

I did not take notes while I was reading about the lives of Martha and Maria.  Probably the thing that made the most impression on me was that Martha seems to have been strong and smart.  She had many children and led a productive life.  The book says she looked like her father while Maria was very pretty.  Maria had a very happy marriage according to the author.  She died very young leaving a young child and her husband was so devastated that he could not talk about her even to his child  even after he married again.  And again children were taken into the home of Thomas Jefferson's sister-in-law to be raised as Thomas Jefferson spent many of the following years in DC in public life.

The smallest part of the book is about Maria.  The author says she was very pretty.  But it is interesting to note that there were no likenesses of her. No paintings...nothing to save for future generations what she looked like.  

I just started the third part of the book when the author talks about the life of Harriet, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.  The author explains that when Jefferson left for the eight years he spent as President.  He left instructions that the overseer had no power over the house slaves which included Sally and her family.  Many of the slaves that Jefferson owned were Hemings family.  One Hemings man was a genius with woodworking.  Others had special gifts that set them apart,  Many of the house slaves were Hemings.  The actual family that served in the house were cooks and other specialized workers.  One can read that the fabric for their clothes was nicer than that of the field hands.  Because Jefferson was absent and the overseer did not bother the house, there was little for the house slaves to do except air out the house when Jefferson was due to arrive.  So Harriet was raised by a mother who had time for her.  And Sally Hemings had had an unusual experience and was quite worldly for the time.  She had accompanied Jefferson's daughter to Paris. She had braved the voyage to Paris with no male to accompany her as the chaperone for Jefferson's youngest daughter.  She had learned French.  She had seen balls and the beginning of the French Revolution.  She was probably more worldly than many Virginia wives.  

A google search brings up the names of the children reported to be the children of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson:

Sally Hemings had at least six children fathered by Thomas Jefferson. Four survived to adulthood. Decades after their negotiation, Jefferson freed all of Sally Hemings's children – Beverly and Harriet left Monticello in the early 1820s; Madison and Eston were freed in his will and left Monticello in 1826.

and

In 1873 Madison Hemings left the only known account of his sister's life after Monticello: Harriet married a white man in good standing in Washington City. ... She raised a family of children, and so far as I know they were never suspected of being tainted with African blood in the community where she lived or lives.

The author of this book did a great deal of historical research but was never able to find anyone living in Washington City who appears to have been Harriet.

I found the book to be of great interest.  

 

Lessons in Chemistry

So, when I put the addition book down, I picked this book up.  And this was totally entertaining.  A story about a serious Chemist in the 1950's in a time period when women walked in the room and it was expected that she was not a chemist...she might get coffee for the group or take notes as the secretary.  I liked the book.  The end was a bit weak as the author tied up the loose ends very neatly.  But it was fun read,  Probably my favorite thing was 12:30's thoughts on everything that happened.  

 

Demon Copperhead

I was very excited to start this book.  It was recommended to me by Charlie who told me that his sister-in-law said it was her favorite book EVER!  And truly it was that good for the pages that I read.  I laughed out loud,  I marveled at how Barbara Kingsolver caught the exact words for a young man growing up in a trailer with a less than perfect home life.  And then I just happened to read the part about the first Pharm party in the foster home at exactly the same time that I ran into Charlie again and he said: "it is basically a book about addition",  I have read several very good books about addiction in the last few years,  I just can't do that again right now.  So I have put the book down.

 

The Book Woman's Daughter

A great story about a young woman who finds the freedom to take care of herself in her family's home on Troublesome Creek.  Honey is a blue.  But she manages find a job delivering books to the families living in the hollers of the East Kentucky mountains.  The story is Honey's triumph to live day to day in spite of prejudice and injustice.  It is about the fellowship of women in managing in a male dominated world of early 20th C Kentucky.