Reading in the Garden

Unearthing a Good Book The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens. It was supposed to be just a college English course assignment. Write a brief biography of a stranger. That’s how Joe got to know Carl Iverson—a convicted rapist and murderer. Carl, who was paroled after thirty years in prison, is in a nursing home dying of pancreatic cancer. With only months left to live, he is given a chance to make his dying declaration—an opportunity to come clean before he leaves this world for the next. But things aren’t always black and white. As Joe learns more about Carl and his case, his view and life are altered in unsuspected ways, because digging up the past can sometimes unearth dangerous consequences. This was a book club selection and although on the one hand it sounded pretty good, on the other hand it also sounded kind of morbid since Carl’s past isn’t exactly a walk through a field of flowers. So I started it with half enthusiasm, half trepidation. The enthusiasm quickly took ove...

A Missing Child What She Knew by Gilly MacMillan. “ Wow!”   That’s how I felt after I blazed through this book about an eight-year-old boy who goes missing after a walk in the woods with his mother. It’s hard to let go of this story which hurtles you through every parent’s worst nightmare—a missing child. Rachel, the mother, becomes a suspect after an outburst and a misinterpreted smile at the press conference where she threatens the abductor. As if the emotional devastation of her missing boy isn’t enough to destroy a person, social media cruelly vilifies her. Meanwhile, her recently remarried pediatric surgeon ex-husband is untouched by the tornado of hate and insults, though not the jolt of losing his son. The story alternates between the mother’s and detective’s narrations as well as transcripts from the shattered detective’s visits with a psychologist in the aftermath of this highly publicized case. We are immersed in how Rachel deals with the shocking event along wit...