1965

 Today I went to a lecture at the history center about the flood in 1965 that took place in Winona. The east side of town (where I live) was hit hard. My street was under water but two blocks away from the river from my house was not underwater. The flood crested at 20.77 feet on April 19th. Lake City and Wabasha also crested that day. People had to be evacuated. The mayor hired young men and high school boys to build dikes and fill sand bags for $1.50 per hour which was good pay in those days. The dikes were made of piles of dirt lined with plastic and covered with sand bags. People walked the top of the dikes to make sure they didn't fail. The mayor hired girls and older people to make sandwiches. Several people in the audience remember the flood and did help with the dikes and the sandwiches. The sandwiches were baloney or spam. The sewer system was so inundated with river water that manhole covers were flying into the air followed by a stream of water. They solved this problem in two ways. They build pipes in the road that went 12 feet into the air. The excess water could go up that pipe and stay contained until the river level decreased. The other way was to take large rubber bags, fill them with water, the plug the man holes from below. If the dikes had failed Winona would not continue to be an island city. Winona would have been a two island city. The lecture was interesting. Having audience members who were actually there share their memories was very nice.

 

 

Kin

Tayari Jones is the author of Kin. This is a story about two girls who grew up together in Honeysuckle, Louisiana. Both girls are motherless. Vernice's mother was killed by her father in a murder/suicide before she was six months old. Her Aunt returned from Ohio to raise her. Annie's mother abandoned her soon after birth. She was raised by her grandmother. Annie left high school early to find her mother in Atlanta. Vernice left after graduating high school to attend Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Both girls struggled to be without parents but in different ways. This book, published in 2026, gave an interesting outlook on what it is like to be young, abandoned, black, and poor in the deep south. 

 

 

Let's Call Her Barbie

Renee Rosen is the author of Let's Call Her Barbie. The book is about a woman named Ruth Handler. Along with her husband she founded a toy company called Mattel. She was an inventor and a business magnate. She excelled in selling. While on a trip to Europe with her son, she came across a doll in Switzerland named Bild Lilli. At the time all the dolls were babies. Bild Lilli was an adult doll with adult features. After that, Ruth's passion was the Barbie doll (named after her daughter). She neglected her children and spent all her waking hours at work. Ruth was the only person who believed Barbie would become a hit toy. Together with another inventor named Jack and several clothing designers they made a fortune on the Barbie doll. Later came the Ken doll (named after her son). She suffered sexual discrimination from bankers and investors along the way. Later, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she stopped paying close attention to what was happening at Mattel. Someone mishandled money and Ruth was charged with fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. She paid her fines. Later she invented a prosthesis for mastectomy patients. I enjoyed reading about such a strong woman. 

 

 

Ms. Mebel Goes Back To The Chopping Block

Jesse Q. Sutanto is the author of Ms. Mebel Goes Back To The Chopping Block. This is a humorous fiction book about an insuppressible Ms. Mebel. Ms. Mebel is a wife and mother living in Indonesia. She and her husband are of Chinese/Indonesian descent. They have a son, a daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren. One day Ms. Mebel's husband comes home from work to announce he is seeking a divorce and is going to marry the cook Ms. Mebel hired to please her husband. Ms. Mebel's whole life was in helping her husband and her son. Now she is lost. Ms. Mebel has no filter. She says things that are rude. She has a tendency to invade personal boundaries. She is concerned what other people in her society will think once she is divorced. At first she copes with the divorce by spending money on designer clothes, shoes and hand bags. Then she copes by signing up for French cooking lessons. She thinks if she can cook French food well enough her husband will take her back. She ends up at a culinary school in rural England. As the weeks pass by the things that were important to her (social standing, designer clothes, her husband) become less important. New things become important such as friendships, good tasting food, and having a skill. When I first started reading this book her character was so over the top I thought the entire book would be silly. By the end of the book I changed my mind and I now think this is a book worth reading. 

 

 

The Night We Lost Him

Laura Dave is the author of the mystery novel called The Night We Lost Him. The story is about a father of three, an ex-husband of three, and the owner of luxury rentals on both the east coast and the west coast. Liam is the father and he kept his three children very separate. When he suddenly dies falling from a cliff outside one of his favorite homes on the California coast, his children try to figure out how he could fall from a property he was very familiar with. The authorities rule his death as accidental but his children don't believe that. The story is narrated in half by Nora, the daughter. The other half is narrated by Liam himself and it is unclear why he kept so many secrets. The book moves a little slow but the character of Nora is completely relatable.  

 

 

The Night We Became Strangers

 I enjoyed reading The Night We Became Strangers by Lorena Hughes in part because it is set in Quito, Ecuador which is a city I have been too. In this story a family radio station decides to put on a radio play much like War Of The Worlds that aired in the United States eleven years earlier. The people in Quito took it seriously. Panic spread throughout the city. Even though various sodas were advertised throughout the broadcast the idea that Martians had landed near Quito was real for many people. When it was over anger set in. People rioted at the radio station and set the building on fire leaving Valeria an orphan. Her uncle sends her to a boarding school outside of the city. When she graduates she tries to find out what happened that night. Her uncle is unwilling to talk about. Her former friend, Matias, and his mother also refuse to talk about it. Valeria does not give up though. This book had a surprise ending and a nice writing style.

 

 

Lake Effect

Lake Effect is a family novel written by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. The story starts out in Rochester, New York in 1977. Clara is in high school and starting to fall in love with the boy next door. All of her plans fail when her mother decides to leave her father and take off with the man next door. Twenty years later Clara still isn't over her anger and grief. Reputations were ruined but twenty years later none of that matters to anyone besides Clara. This is a story about mothers and daughters, love and grief.