Alice Monroe is the author of Dear Life. She is Canadian and her stories are based in small towns around Lake Huron. This book is a series of stories about ordinary people who make decisions, take a chance or don't take a chance, and their life ends up in a completely different place. Monroe is a charming story teller. I am determined to read more of what she has written. In 2013 she won the Nobel Prize for fiction.
With the help of Malcolm Brabant, Tova Friedman is the author of her autobiography The Daughter of Auschwitz: A Memoir. Tova was one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz. She lived with her parents in a small town in northern Poland. She lived in a Jewish ghetto for a time. Her father was a Jewish police officer so he got a little more food. He was also forced to dig a hole. The next day he had to put his parents in a truck where the stood at the edge of the hole and were shot and buried. Tova saw incredible acts of cruelty. She arrived at Auschwitz at age 4. At age 6 she was sent to the gas chambers. Her mother watched her go in. Due to some German bureaucracy she was let back out of the gas chambers and back to her ward. By age 7 the war was over. Tova and her parents had survived. This was an incredible story to read. Tova's resilience and will to live are outstanding.
Fran Littlewood is the author of Amazing Grace Adams. This story is set in current times in London. Grace is now 45 is not doing so well. She used to be amazing. Her husband thought so and her daughter thought so. Today is her estranged daughter's 16th birthday and everything is going wrong. And Grace loses her mind and makes a series of poor decisions which ends up with her getting arrested. I can relate although I have never lost it like Grace has lost it.
Marie Benedict is one of my favorite historical fiction authors. This time I read The Mitford Affair. The Mitford family lived in England. During the 1930's the six daughters and one son became famous and/or infamous. One of them married a pro-fascist Englishman. One moved to Vienna and became a fan of Adolph Hitler. joining him at the Olympic games in Germany. Another sister was also a fan of Hitler and lived in Germany. One became a novelist. One became a Communist first moving to Spain and then to the United States. One of them was a novelist and informed Winston Churchill on the comings and goings of her sisters living in Germany. The father in the family was anti-German but the mother was pro-fascist. Crazy how different family members can be.
Minnesota author William Kent Krueger is the author of The River We Remember. The story is set in 1958 in a small town in south/central Minnesota. A wealthy landowner is found dead in the river and Sheriff Brody Dern tries to find out how he died. Was it suicide or murder? People in the town talk and a rumor starts that native American veteran is responsible for the death. He eventually ends up in jail and his wife is harassed. We don't find out until the very end who murdered the man but it ends up being someone no one suspected. I enjoyed the description of the town and the river and the countryside. The character development was excellent.
Today I was walking around Lake Winona for some exercise on a nice day. As I walked on the paved path I noticed the water was high. Some tree trunks were under water. Soon a black bird was calling from my left ahead of me. As the bird flew over the path ahead of me at about 2 feet off the ground, I saw it was chasing a brown weasel. The weasel came out of the vegetation, stood on the path, looked at me and proceeded across the path and entered the weeds nearest the lake. I saw a fisher once at Zippel Bay State Park but this is the first time I have ever seen a wild weasel. The moment was over before I could move my hand to reach for my phone.
I know it's July but today I picked seeds of June grass at the Nature Conservancy site of Weaver Dunes. I picked two half gallon empty m...
