Tidelands

 

I read this book on the recommendation of my daughter, Sarah.  And I did really like the book.  But I got to the end of the book and I just couldn't finish it.  I could not think of a way that the heroin was going to be ok.  And so every night I wanted to turn it on, but I couldn't.  But tonight I gritted my teeth and turned it back on.  And it ended about as good as it could end.  Here is the official synopsis:

England 1648. A dangerous time for a woman to be different . . . Midsummer’s Eve, 1648, and England is in the grip of civil war between renegade King and rebellious Parliament. The struggle reaches every corner of the kingdom, even to the remote Tidelands – the marshy landscape of the south coast.  

Alinor, a descendant of wise women, crushed by poverty and superstition, waits in the graveyard under the full moon for a ghost who will declare her free from her abusive husband. Instead she meets James, a young man on the run, and shows him the secret ways across the treacherous marsh, not knowing that she is leading disaster into the heart of her life. 

Suspected of possessing dark secrets in superstitious times, Alinor’s ambition and determination mark her out from her neighbours. This is the time of witch-mania, and Alinor, a woman without a husband, skilled with herbs, suddenly enriched, arouses envy in her rivals and fear among the villagers, who are ready to take lethal action into their own hands. 

The Unseen World

 

Synopsis:

The moving story of a daughter’s quest to discover the truth about her beloved father’s hidden past.

Ada Sibelius is raised by David, her brilliant, eccentric, socially inept single father, who directs a computer science lab in 1980s-era Boston. Home-schooled, Ada accompanies David to work every day; by twelve, she is a painfully shy prodigy. The lab begins to gain acclaim at the same time that David’s mysterious history comes into question. When his mind begins to falter, leaving Ada virtually an orphan, she is taken in by one of David’s colleagues. Soon she embarks on a mission to uncover her father’s secrets: a process that carries her from childhood to adulthood. What Ada discovers on her journey into a virtual universe will keep the reader riveted until The Unseen World’s heart-stopping, fascinating conclusion.

I actually liked this book.  I am not sure that I would call the conclusion heart-stopping.  But I do understand that the author was offering an interesting idea about who really wrote this book. 

The Dutch House

 This book was suggested by someone in our knitting group.  I liked it a lot.  

The review on Amazon includes these words:

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

The son of Cyril tells the story.  To spite the evil step mother, Danny's older sister (who has mothered her brother since their mother left the Dutch House when they were young) makes Danny become a doctor as about the only thing the two have been left from their father's estate is money for schooling.  But Danny spent many hours with his father collecting rents and watching his father fix anything and everything in his rental properties.  And he only wants to following his father's footsteps to make real estate his life as well.  

You will like the book.

Conjure women

This is a good one!  I started a book last night about a door....and wasn't enticed to read more tonight.  But after five minutes of listening to this book tonight, I know it is one that I will finish,

'Til the Well Runs Dry

 

This book is a change of pace for me.

This has been a difficult book for me.  The politics of Trinidad are too hard,  The characters' lives are too hard,  But I turned it on tonight.  I had to write down .....hmmm....what is his name....Farouk....his mother comes to visit him in prison. She says that "they" have asked her to come.  And he looks at his very pretty mother and wonders why his father was able to "Win her as a wife" ....and it comes to him,  Her difficult personality cause her parents to just choose anyone who would  "take her away".....she is from an Indian family.  And the main character who is her son is thinking that she may have married below her family's wealth and her beauty.  It is an interesting thought.

The book continued to be too hard for it's entirety.  But I could not leave it unfinished.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

I am reading this via audible.  I mentioned to a buddy that many years ago when my life was BUSY with babies and husband and all sorts of miscellaneous "stuff", I read a book about a book club.  I think that the name of it was "And the Ladies of the Club".....and I loved it.  But many of my buddies in that time period didn't love the book....not enough action.  But if I remember this correctly my life was overly busy and I relished the calm and slow moving book  Now in this very slow moving time of lock downs and social distancing, I find this book to be a bit slow....not enough action.  I believe that if I had read it in a busier part of my life, I would have liked it much more.

In December 2023 I found myself finishing one book and starting The Glorious Cause.  I LOVED the first part about the battle of Brooklyn Heights and decided I did not want to read any more until January when I had more time and more concentration. 

 I had enough people who really liked this book and so I finished it.  And I was glad that I had finished it.  It had a very nice closing to it.  Or then perhaps I liked it better because I was again in a very busy part of my life....who knows?

Agent 355

This was a great, very short and very interesting historical fiction read!  My favorite topic:  the Revolutionary War.  But this story took place in New York which is the part of the country that I know much less about,  And the author did not romanticize the story.  She told what she believed happened according to the records that she had examined.  But she told it with imagination....What would Agent 355 have experienced?  I highly recommend this audible original!

The Wikipedia article about agent 355 gives many possible names of women who could have been agent 355 in the very real Culper Ring.  Here is what Wikipedia says:

Agent 355 (died after 1780) was the code name of a female spy during the American Revolution, part of the Culper Ring. Agent 355 was one of the first spies for the United States, but her real identity is unknown.^[1] The number, 355, could be de-crypted from the system the Culper Ring used to mean "lady."^[2]

The author's take is that Agent 355 was a young woman who lived in an affluent home in New York that was hosting a British Officer.  The young woman had access to parties and other events in which the British officers were entertained.  And she used that access to gather information that she passed on to the Continental Army as a spy.  She fell in love with a man who was also a part of the Culper Ring and while she was captured for her part in the espionage, the man that she loved escaped being identified.

Do not read further if you plan to listen to the story!

They married and she was pregnant when she was captured.  She gave birth to a boy child on the TERRIBLE ship used to store prisoners.  She managed to smuggle her son out of the ship, but she did not escape and died while captive.  The son was raised by his father.  It is a good story.