Reading in the Garden

 Summer 2021 Quick Picks A mix of recommendations—novels and non-fiction, adults and kids.                                 Here are my most recent reads that I enjoyed. The Girls in the Stilt House  by Kelly Mustian A beautifully written story of two teenage girls involved in a murder in the back swamps of Mississippi and the unravelling of what brought the two strangers together. This book kept calling for me any time I reluctantly had to put it down.  It is an excellent tale of despair, tragedy, and rays of hope for justice in an unjust world. The end had me biting my nails and holding my breath, as the past comes back to haunt the relationship that was forged out of necessity and survival. The Secret Keeper of Jaipur   by Alka Joshi I couldn’t resist returning to Alka Joshi’s rich and vivid India, where once again I was enraptured by the story, the culture, and...

  Injustice, Courage, and an Indomitable Spirit. Imagine a husband committing you to an insane asylum just to get rid of you.  That was a common occurrence in the 1800s and since a woman was her husband’s property she had no voice, no recourse.  The doctors signed off on a husband’s request because he was a man after all, so he was considered superior, all-knowing, and all powerful, and the women were tossed in an institution against their will with no way to defend themselves.  That’s what happened to Elizabeth Packard in 1860.     She was too outspoken for her husband who was a PASTOR. She had her own views, her own opinions, and when she started influencing parishioners in a Bible class, she went too far.  It endangered her husband's authority and his sponsorship from an outspoken donor to the church who opposed abolition.  She was treading way too far over her womanly boundaries and had to be stopped.  S...

Getting Creative with Meals.   Can you guess what the meal in the picture is?  No, it’s not roadkill, although it does resemble something that’s been run over by a semitruck.  What we have here is a delicious Mock Duck. It was made with red lentils and rice. I found this recipe in the  Wartime Recipes  cookbook.     After reading numerous historical fictions about WWII, I really wanted to find a cookbook that offers different versions of coffee substitutes that are mentioned here and there in books:  coffee made from acorns ( The Paris Architect  by Charles Belfoure); coffee made from carrots, acorns, parsnips ( The Girl from the Channel Islands   by Jenny Lecoat); or chicory  coffee ( The Rose Code   f r om Kate Quinn).  Sadly, this cookbook did not have any such recipe. It did, however, offer other recipes from a time when food was scarce, especially coffee, sugar, eggs, butter, and other it...

  Worth the Six Hundred Pages  Top secret codebreakers during WWII, a royal wedding, friendships, love, betrayals, a madhouse, and even a Mad Hatter literary society—this book has it all!  I was drawn to this well-written, mesmerizing, historical fiction like a magnet.   The book toggles between the early 1940s when three women work at Bletchley Park in England.  This is the top secret location where the codebreakers work frantically to decrypt German, Italian, and other messages. The story then pivots to 1947, right before the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Philip of Greece, and a mystery surrounding a woman imprisoned in a mental institution.     Although this beefy book wanders outside my comfort zone at 626 pages, I was hooked the entire time.  It wasn’t like other longer books where I wished they would end already, where I think the author should have and easily could have lopped off a lot to bring it down to a sti...

  The Forbidden Field of Medicine for Women A woman trying to pursue her passion in a time when it was illegal for her to be surgeon was fascinating.  It made me realize not just how much women’s roles in healthcare have evolved, but also the enormous challenges and discoveries in the medical field of a bygone era. Hooray for Nora, who quickly won my respect, and later my full admiration!   It’s the middle of the nineteenth century in London, and the cholera epidemic left little Nora an orphan.  Dr. Croft took her into his home, under his wing where she immersed herself into learning all about the medical field. Yet in that time and age, Nora was not allowed to become a surgeon as she wanted, and even Dr. Croft’s medical license could be in jeopardy if anyone knew how involved she was.  This dilemma hanging over their heads eventually becomes an imminent threat.  What will Nora do? What will Dr. Croft do?  What will their new, ...

  A Real-life Horror Story An Antarctic expedition turns into a real-life horror story. The crew of the  Belgica  is mentally and physically pulled to the brink of hell when their ship is stuck in powerful and unforgiving ice for a year. An amazing tale of survival that made me shiver just imagining what they endured!   In 1897 the  Belgica  sets sail on an expedition which is met with drama before even reaching Antarctica. Insubordinate, gun-wielding sailors and the ship running aground could have been clear omens that this voyage was destined for tragedy. Yet the mission continues on with hair-raising results.  After the commandant’s betrayal, the crew cannot escape the icy nightmare they find themselves in. Helplessly, they watch as the polar nights descend on them like a coffin lid, leading some to madness while almost everyone is plagued with a mysterious, debilitating illness.    Although the destination of the South Pole was not r...

  Happy Earth Day! It can be depressing to watch the news or look out the window and see climate change in action.  In 2020 we had so many hurricanes in the U.S. the scientists had worked their way through our entire alphabet in naming them and had to start on the Greek alphabet.  And remember the deep freeze in Texas that left people with no power, bursting pipes and unheard of electricity bills racked up in the thousands? Then there are the annual California fires that get bigger and more destructive each year.  Sometimes it feels like a regular person is being sucked defenselessly in the downward spiral of our planet. We feel helpless. So what can a regular person do?  The answers starts with: little things.  Because little things add up to big things when more and more people do them. That’s why I decided to get some guidance in changing my habits and mindset and this book is a great first step in that direction.   The Almo...