Pigs In Heaven

  I finally read Barbara Kingsolver's sequel to The Bean Trees called Pigs In Heaven. In The Bean Trees, Taylor Greer is driving to Tuscon from the east coast. As she stops for a break in a small town in Oklahoma, a woman hands her a 4 year old girl saying her mother is dead and her father is abusing her. So Taylor takes the girl and later adopts her. The girl is very clingy so she gets the name Turtle (because snapping turtles won't let go of a stick). She raises Turtle in Tuscon and gradually she recovers from her horrid past and begins to talk and to grow. Later Turtle and Taylor help a young guy and get national recognition for saving his life. People from the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma can plainly see that Turtle is one of their clan. They take steps to reclaim Turtle. This panics Taylor into moving out of their  home and going on the run. Invoking the parable of King Solomon where two mothers are fighting over the same child and Solomon gives the child to the mother who does not agree it should be cut in half, Taylor and the Cherokee Nation work out their differences. This is an epic tale based on a grouping of true stories of children being taken from the Cherokee Nation and raised with Caucasians. 

 

 

History Day

This evening I volunteered to be a judge of history day projects for the southeast region of Minnesota. We met in the student ballroom at Winona State University. Winners get to go to the state history day on April 19th in Minneapolis. I was paired with another judge who has done this before.

First we read their paper. Then we looked over their board. Then we had a list of questions to ask. Our favorite project was this first one on the great flood on 1927. These were all middle school children participating today.

This one was on Rosie the Riveter. Most kids did a better job on the poster than following a theme, laying out a hypothesis, or getting enough research.

This guy even made a mock diorama in a pan with mud and boards and tiny soldiers.

The project on Somalia used only 3 sources.

White Rose was a group of young people living in Germany who resisted the Nazi's. They started out with three people but eventually the group swelled to 80 people. The three original members were killed by the Nazi's.

 

Doorman Wanted

Glenn R. Miller is an author living in Minneapolis. He published Doorman Wanted in 2024. This is a humorous story about a guy named Henry who tries to distance himself from his rich father. His father is rich because he is ruthless in business. Henry's father works in New York so Henry decides he will move to California and help people who are less fortunate than him. When his father dies Henry inherits a ten story apartment building. When he goes to the building to pick up the keys he is not ready to face the fact that he owns the building. He sees a sign on the window about a job opening for a door man so he applies. Henry gets the job as doorman during the day shift. He receives packages for others. He arranges entrance for catering companies when his tenants have parties. The building has a manager but she is quite useless. The evening doorman will do anything to avoid the manager because she is so rude to him. Henry tries to help all the building tenants. He even helps some homeless people who live in Central Park. The story moves along quickly and is very funny. 

 

 

In The Midst Of Winter

 I enjoy reading Isabel Allende's writing. This time I read In The Midst Of Winter which was published in 2015. After a fender bender car accident in New York City, the lives of three immigrants are linked forever. Robert is the one who hit the other car. He is from Brazil and is teaching at a local university. The person driving the car that was struck is Evelyn Ortega, a young undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. Robert gives Evelyn his card with his home address. Later that evening she arrives at his house upset. She stutters and English is not her first language, so he calls the woman who lives in the basement, Lucia, to come up and help him decipher what Evelyn is trying to say. Lucia is a lecturer at his university and she is from Chile. Robert and Lucia decide to help Evelyn with her problem. Along with solving the problem in New York, we learn about their lives growing up in Guatemala, Chile and Brazil. We learn why they immigrated. The story is simply mesmerizing.

 

 

Tell Tale

Jeffrey Archer is the author of the short story collection known as Tell Tale. Two of the stories in this collection were based on a Reader's Digest request to write a story with exactly 100 words in an hour or less. He did a good job on those two stories. A common theme among the stories is irony. I don't want to give away any spoilers. In one story a teacher in England, who visited Dachau as a child, brings his class on the same trip and learns a horrifying fact about his grandfather. In another story a police detective investigates a murder of a mayor in a nearby Italian town. All the people in the town confess to murdering this mayor. It isn't until he gives up the investigation that he learns who actually killed the mayor. These are all good stories. This is a book worth reading.

 

 

The Weird Sisters

Eleanor Brown is an award winning author who wrote The Weird Sisters. Their father is a professor at a college specializing in Shakespeare. He names his three daughters after characters in Shakespeare writings. They live in a college town an hour from New York City. Rose, the eldest daughter, lives in her home town. When she finds out her mother has breast cancer she moves into her family home. Gradually all the daughters move back home. Much of the book is spent analyzing why they left or stayed in their hometown. More time is spent exploring their petty jealousies. I enjoyed the book but I'm not sure I would any of those women as a sister.

 

 

A Clergyman's Daughter

I was in the mood to reread 1984 by George Orwell. So I looked at my library and didn't find that but I did find The Clergyman's Daughter. This book is old, discolored and tattered. This book is so old it still has that envelope with dates indicating when the book was borrowed. October 2, 1982 was the oldest date but it was published in 1935. The story is about a young woman working relentlessly to help her father with his church and his meals. He doesn't appreciate a single thing he does. He is stingy with money. At one time he had a bit of money but gradually lost it by making poor investments. He is grouchy and rude to his parishioners. His daughter, Dorothy, is forever trying to smooth his rough edges.  She is up past midnight working to make costumes for a church play when suddenly she goes missing. A vile woman in the neighborhood who is always telling evil stories about people in the village makes up a story that Dorothy was seen leaving town with a local bachelor who had three bastard children. This isn't true but it created a huge scandal. The clergyman angrily refused to talk to the press so only the false story was in the newspapers. Actually she lost her memory. She was out on the road far from town when she met 3 other people. Together they applied for jobs picking hops. When the hop picking season ended her memory returned. With her wages she wrote letters to her father begging for money to return home. He refused to respond. Eventually she ended up homeless and begging in Trafalgar Square. Eventually she was found my her father's cousin and taken in to work at a school where she was treated unfairly. Eventually a man from  her village arrived. The evil woman who told lies was sued for libel by a banker in town. The evil woman left town. Dorothy returned home to resume her duties with her father. Life for women in the 1800's was tough.