Meadowlands by Elizabeth Jeffrey

Meadowlands.  Elizabeth Jeffrey. Severn House Publishers. April 2015. 224 pp.  ISBN#: 9780727884695.

Here’s another story about the ups and downs of WWI centered in the Barsham family.  They are aristocrats who cannot remain immune from the hardships and horrors to come, although Lady Adelaide does nothing but complain about how inconvenienced she is by losing staff and not having someone to fawn on her every wish.  Sir George Barsham is a Minister of Parliament who uses any excuse to be away from home.  The Barsham children all agree to “do their part” with James off to fight in the military, Millie to drive an ambulance to transport the wounded and dying, and Gina who starts a soup kitchen for the wives and children of soldiers who are off in Flanders fighting for King and country.

So what makes this novel different from the hundreds of other stories that have memorialized the causes and effects of this devastating war?  The first lies in the fact that England did everything possible to woo every male into fighting in Flanders but failed to take care of their spouses and children.  No salary or even part of a salary was sent to spouses and the families of wounded men received no recompense for their part in serving in the war.  The result was devastating poverty and Gina becomes not only soup kitchen director but also advocate for the needs of these present or former military families.

The second concerns the quiet but awful custom of committing pregnant young ladies into houses of insanity, followed by having to give up their babies and forever live in the deplorable conditions of their home.  Cruelty and ill treatment are described with disarming clarity.

The upshot is that this so-called “war to end all wars” had devastating physical, mental and emotional results that bear telling and remembering.  Elizabeth Jeffrey does so with sensitivity, accuracy and passion! There is so much more than what is described above which makes delightful reading! Well done historical fiction, indeed!

The Second Sister by Marie Bostwick

The Second Sister.  Marie Bostwick. Kensington Press.  March 2015. 353 pp. pb. ISBN # 9780758269300. 

Lucy Toomey has been living the fast-paced, whirling life of a Washington insider as the campaign assistant of a Presidential candidate.  Working umpteen hours a day, her diet and her clothing style have suffered dramatically.  She has no life outside of this job. The only reminder that she once had such a life is in the middle of the night telephone calls from her sister, Alice.  Alice keeps Lucy up to date on the occurrences in her home town of Nilson’s Bay in Wisconsin but every topic is interrupted with Alice’s plea that Lucy return home for Christmas.  Lucy has few good memories of her time in that town but promises finally to come home for Christmas to her mentally challenged sister.  That promise happens but not in the way Lucy expects. For a day before the election, Lucy receives a call that her sister has been found dead from an overdose of drugs.

It’s Lucy’s boss, soon to be President-elect, who insists that Lucy return to Wisconsin for the funeral and for at least a month after that.  Lucy had insisted the same for him after a family loss and now he demands she do the same, not only to mourn but to think about what is really important in life before she returns to work for him after he is sworn in as President of the United States.  Return Lucy does and at first has trouble dealing with her mourning and all the friends of Alice who treat her like the person who abandoned her sister. 

The day of the funeral Lucy discovers her sister had earlier planned and written a very carefully plotted will that means Lucy must remain in Wisconsin for a time or lose the inheritance of the cottage where Alice lived, a place left to her by their parents.  This then is the story of how Lucy begins to remember the better times in her past and focuses on the things that truly give lasting pleasure and meaning to life. 

It’s a lovely engaging story that never lags with fascinating people and places in this small Wisconsin town.  Romance may lie ahead for persons and other activities that Lucy never believed she could come to hold dear, but she gets the chance to see things a different way.  That makes all the difference in the world, in Lucy’s world, a world she comes to share and see as Alice did!

Very nicely crafted, Ms. Bostwick!

Rhode Island Red: The Nanette Hayes Mystery Book 1 by Charlotte Carter

Rhode Island Red: The Nanette Hayes Mystery Book 1.  Charlotte Carter. Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller.  January 2015. 179 pp. e-book. ASIN #: B00QN352W4.

One can picture Nanette playing sultry jazz tunes outside of anywhere she can park in Manhattan, New York.  Although she’s a French major, she knows she’s not a very good jazz musician but she worships the music of the greats, especially Thelonious Monk and others of his ilk.  Her life is difficult as people leave little change in her sax case but is about to become terrifying after she decides to let a fellow sax player named Sig come home with her.  He tells her he’ll help her find all the hot spots where she can earn a great living and maybe they can even jam together for the public.  Whatever is she doing taking a white man home to her apartment, a stranger at that?

The next morning, Nanette awakens to find Sig dead on the floor of her living room.  A rough, tough black cop verbally works over Nanette believing she is the murderer but having no proof.  He leaves but promises to return and so he does many times in the course of this mystery.  After he leaves the first time, Nanette finds $60,000 socked up in Sig’s sax case.  In the pages that follow with Nanette attempting to decide whether to turn over the money to the police, keep the money, give it to acquaintances in need, she begins to unravel the twisted connections of those connected to Sig.  Nanette gets a bit battered up in the process of her journey.

These scenes involving Sig’s girlfriend, other musicians, etc. are very moving and work very well in drawing the reader into total immersion in this all too brief story.  In fact, even though Nanette is a ball of fear-filled nervousness, her determination to continue to the source of this crime causes many tension-ridden moments right up to the dramatic solution of this horrific crime!

The term “Rhode Island Red” is the heart of this well-crafted thriller, a story that is intriguing and highly recommended reading for readers who love a story in which to lose one’s self.

The Accidental Empress: A Novel by Allison Pataki

The Accidental Empress: A Novel.  Allison Pataki. Howard Books. February 2015. 512 pp. hb. ISBN#: 9781476790220.

Elizabeth or “Sisi” is the 15 year-old Dutchess of Bavaria who is about to travel to Germany with her sister, Helene who is betrothed to marry the Emperor Franz Josef who is the ruler of Austria, Russia, Germany and Italy. One huge problem follows: the Emperor is controlled by his mother, who is the sister of Sisi and Helene’s mother.  The second is that Sisi falls in love with Franz and he with her.  Helene, on the other hand, is timid to the point of rudeness and has no wish to marry the Emperor.  We learn that eventually after an interminable amount of time full of Helene’s failures that Franz insists he marry the younger sister. It’s the first time the Emperor bucks his mother’s will and so begins Sisi’s journey into the world of Empress, a role for which she’s little equipped in spite of her aristocratic background.

The reader expects to read like a fairy tale come true but such is not to be the case.  Instead we find Sisi and Franz happy only in their marital bed, but the rest of Sisi’s life is full of court protocol and control by her mother-in-law, Sophie.  Sisi knows little of Franz’s rule or the thorny issues he faces with wars, threat of wars, rebellions, financial problems etc. 

One issue, however, engages Sisi’s interest and it is that one that will determine the course of her future happiness after Franz realizes she is more capable than he initially realized.  That is the rebellion in Hungary and their desire for independence from Germany and Franz’s control.  The latter part of this novel moves out of the family debacle and control issues focus to begin the part of Sisi’s life that earned her the fame that she richly deserved and which she holds to this day.

The Accidental Empress: A Novel is great reading about courtly life from 1853 forward and about the internal and external, complex crises that occur out of the public eye but which hold political significance for all whom royalty ruled.  Loved this novel and highly recommend it as notable historical fiction!

Lady of Asolo by Siobhan Daiko

Lady of Asolo.  Siobhan Daiko. Fragrant Books.  November 2014. 242 pp. paperback and e-book. ISBN #: 9781503109780.

Fern is staying with her Aunt in Asolo, Italy in 1989.  Fern’s a painter and loves walking about the town sketching beautiful or historically interesting scenes.  But something is deeply amiss, as she keeps hearing a strange yet familiar voice calling, “Lorenza!” Add to that she keeps smelling burnt wood and even occasionally seeing the same which appears and then just as mysteriously disappears.  As Fern had just lost her fiancé in terrible accident, this is not helping her to regain composure and peace.

Almost immediately Fern begins to have moments where she is having blacking out spells and during them is living the life of Cecilia, a young lady-in-waiting who serves at the court of Queen Caterina Cornaro in the year 1504 in Venice, Italy.  While there Cecilia falls in love with an artist, Zorzo, with whom she begins a passionate affair.  Back in 1989, Fern receives help from her Aunt’s friend, Luca, who immediately finds Fern fascinating and then more than engaging but Fern is cool to his hints of more than friendship between them. 

Fern begins to slip back and forth in both lives.  The timing of these transitions appears too frequently and frenetically which therefore strains credulity.  Also we see how Cecilia is avoiding the lusty but repulsive advances of a rich suitor, Ludovico.  Living the glorious life of wealth and pleasure can be Cecilia’s destiny if she rejects Zorzo who lives in a world of poverty as a starving but sexy artist.

Their future eventually will collide with that of Fern and Luca.  The reader has no problem with this journey, especially enjoying the beautiful descriptions of the places where Fern and Cecilia reside.  The author creates a sense of vulnerability in Fern where the reader yearns for her healing from the tragedy in her own past.  All in all, In My Lady’s Shadow is a historical romance that comes to a dramatic end with a lot of repetition and going nowhere between the beginning and that perilous finale!

The Traveling Tea Shop: A Novel by Belinda Jones

The Traveling Tea Shop: A Novel.  Belinda Jones. Penguin Group (USA). March 2015. 368 pp.  ISBN#: 9780425279601.

Laurie Davis gets a phenomenal opportunity – the chance to travel up the New England coast with the famous TV cooking star, Pamela Lambert-Leigh, the star of Tea Time With Pamela.  They are both British and totally enchanted with CAKE!  No, it’s not your average, store-bought, boxed style cake but hand-crafted, beautifully decorated and scrumptious-tasting cake, doughnuts, cupcakes or muffins! Yummy!

Laurie’s job is to canvas the best of these bakeries or shops in New York, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The planned new cookbook will cover each creative space, baking process and a description of what it’s like to taste each unique specialty cake in every location. Laurie will be both assistant director arranging visits and tour guide in the surrounding area of each location they visit. Sounds like a dream vacation, doesn’t it?  Not quite!

Pamela has insisted that her feisty mother, Gracie, be their driver for the project.  Gracie is no doddering, elderly lady but a feisty mother and grandmother.  She had a graced marriage, a fact that inspires Laurie who doesn’t exactly have the greatest love history.  Gracie will be driving a double-decker British bus; only Laurie doesn’t realize that Gracie drives every automobile like she’s competing at the Indianapolis 500 final competition!

Add to the mix that Pamela’s daughter, Ravenna, will be accompanying the group.  Ravenna is a very young woman a/k/a obstinate super-brat, to summarize, so nasty that if it were not for Laurie’s wise, sassy and funny responses, this reader would have quit reading; but Laurie saves the day and engages the reader so cleverly that one wants to keep flipping the pages to see if there’s a chance at redemption for this terror of a daughter.  In many other ways, Ravenna also triggers Laurie’s thoughts about her own troubled relationship with her own sister.

So what mouth-watering, standard or exotic cake will make you determined to travel?  This novel absolutely makes one want to go to each site to see the intriguing and beautiful area and test each delightful dessert?  Although this is a novel, the places and desserts are obviously well-researched and actually exist in reality!  No, it’s not a romance but just a lovely romp in which one gets to visualize and taste the best that New England has to offer!

Highly recommended reading, traveling and tasting!

The Reluctant Midwife: A Hope River Novel by Patricia Harman

The Reluctant Midwife: A Hope River Novel.  Patricia Harman. Harper Collins Publishers. March 2015. 432 pp.  ISBN#: 978006235824.

Nurse Becky Myers and her former employer, Dr. Isaac Blum, travel back to their origins in a small West Virginia town.  They are almost penniless and Blum bears the appearance of a mentally challenged individual who just stares and is totally dependent on Becky to feed, dress and change him on a daily basis.  Her own marriage has fallen apart as her husband was obviously suffering from what we now know is PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, a violent aftermath of his war experiences.  Later he finds comfort elsewhere and Becky is left with nothing.

Add to this stark scenario the fact that it is the 1930s and the Great Depression in America is at its height when there are no jobs to be had and no food for daily sustenance.  The people in Becky’s world survive by sharing the little they have and the bond that establishes is deeper than even family in many instances.  Becky and Blum find a home in an old home abandoned by Becky’s friend Patience, who is now married and a practicing midwife.  Becky herself is a nurse but dreads practicing childbirth outside of the accepted venue of a hospital and even then she’s not so fond of that part of nursing.  She’s more comfortable assisting Patience as she used to do with Blum.  But necessity will draw out her skills and her ability to do what she hated. 

This is the story of Becky and Blum, who represented a wounded America struggling to survive disaster on a daily basis.  She will deliver children, medicate an asthmatic boy in crisis, set fractured bones and more.  Every scene is exciting, tension-ridden, and laced with first uncertainty and then care and compassion.  Healing is mental and emotional for all involved and even Blum occasionally comes out of his almost catatonic state.

The government, in this devastating time, is providing jobs through the CCC or Civilian Conservation Corps.  They establish camps to which the destitute draw, a motley lot whom Beverly will eventually nurse out of several disasters, including an horrific fire that almost destroys the camp’s buildings and homes of its employees.

The Reluctant Midwife is another Hope River Mystery which immediately engages the reader and is almost impossible to put down.  The town gives more than physical shelter to its residents, including some unsavory characters, and is more about opportunities for more than survival and includes some riveting secrets laced throughout the overriding medical plot.  Very nicely crafted, Patricia Harman and strongly recommended!