Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl and Melissa De La Cruz

Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl & Melissa De La Cruz
with my Little Women Storybook Quilt
showing Jo March and Laurie

Jo & Laurie: A Romantic Retelling was a fun, escapist read that I looked forward to picking up every evening.

I don't read many YA books--this is rated for 7-9 grades--but I had a chance to read the beginning of the novel on BookishFirst and liked it enough to trade in my 'points' and claim a copy.

A good knowledge of Little Women and Louisa May Alcott was a must for this reader, and the authors passed the test. Nothing felt improbable, the characters were not twisted into someone unrecognizable.

The authors take up Alcott's characters, loosely based on her real family, and melds Alcott's family story onto the March family. It can get slightly confusing if you try to keep fact and fiction separate. You just have to trust the story, which is not fictionalized biography or wholly the fictional March characters of Alcott's books.

The novel begins after Jo's Little Women has been published to great success and her publisher has contracted her for a second book. She is to conclude the March sisters' stories with marriages. Unable to reconcile herself to such an end, Jo can't give her fictionalized self and sisters romance and a ring.

Jo & Laurie have been best friends but Laurie's feelings are deepening, driving Jo away. Meg finds John Brooke is interested in her, but she feels the need to marry money or to at least allow John to marry well. Beth has died, but not in Jo's story, and Amy is the pig-tailed child dreamer.

The foursome friends of Jo, Laurie, Meg, and John have a week in New York City, with Jo smashing all Laurie's dreams. He moves on to college while Jo struggles to write her sequel. And struggles. And struggles.

But Jo can't finish her ficitonalized story until she comes to grips with her real story. Can she be a writer and a wife? Can she trust to love someone who might leave her, as her beloved sister Beth did?

I found the book charming, easy to read, and a great escape.

I received a free book through BookishFirst in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher:

1869, Concord, Massachusetts: After the publication of her first novel, Jo March is shocked to discover her book of scribbles has become a bestseller, and her publisher and fans demand a sequel. While pressured into coming up with a story, she goes to New York with her dear friend Laurie for a week of inspiration--museums, operas, and even a once-in-a-lifetime reading by Charles Dickens himself!

But Laurie has romance on his mind, and despite her growing feelings, Jo's desire to remain independent leads her to turn down his heartfelt marriage proposal and sends the poor boy off to college heartbroken. When Laurie returns to Concord with a sophisticated new girlfriend, will Jo finally communicate her true heart's desire or lose the love of her life forever?

Jo & Laurie: A Romantic Retelling
by Margaret Stohl & Melissa De La Cruz
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Publication June 2, 2020
ISBN-10: 1984812017
ISBN-13: 978-1984812018

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

I love this novel.

I love the writing, its beauty and quality, the slow reveal of backstory, the melding of the personal and communal crises.

I love the chilling portrayal of a near-future world devastated by climate change and human greed.

I loved the strength of will of the fragile and broken protagonist, Franny.

I love the love story of Franny and Niall, how they hold each other close while letting each other go.

I love the adventure, the chase, how Franny choses the impossible and survives.

I love that the novel made me cry. And think. And love it.

Five Stars. Read it.

I won a free ebook from a publisher giveaway. My review is fair and unbiased.

Migrations
by Charlotte McConaghy
Flatiron Books
Pub Date August 4, 2020
ISBN: 9781250204028
hard cover $26.99 (USD)

from the publisher

For readers of Flight Behavior and Station Eleven, a novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds—and her own final chance for redemption.

Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns and follow them on their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his eccentric crew with promises that the birds she is tracking will lead them to fish.

As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s new shipmates begin to realize that she is full of dark secrets: night terrors, an unsent pile of letters, and an obsession with pursuing the terns at any cost. When the story of her past begins to unspool, Ennis and his crew must ask themselves what Franny is really running toward—and running from.

Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Migrations is both an ode to our threatened world and a breathtaking page-turner about the lengths we will go for the people we love.

"As beautiful and as wrenching as anything I've ever read...Extraordinary." —Emily St. John Mandel

"I recommend Migrations with my whole heart." —Geraldine Brooks

Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle

And I guess that's why we hold on to our bits and pieces in the first place, because we aren't immortal, and though denial fills our days and years, especially those that have slipped away, that kernel of truth is always lodged within. We are all haunted by something-- ~from Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle

Through a dozen moves and the purges each involved, there were boxes that followed me. They remained sealed and taped in each successive basement, but I knew they were there for when I would need them.

The boxes held my diaries dating back to 1963 when I was ten, poems and unfinished novels I had written, scrapbooks and mementos.

There were other boxes, too. Boxes of photographs and slides, books owned by my grandfather or mother or father, my grandfather's papers and newspaper articles, directories and yearbooks, dad's memoirs, mom's medical history.

They were the 'bits and pieces' of my life and my parent's life and my grandfather's life.

I have always been a keeper of things. I see the trait in my family, especially keeping memories and telling stories of long ago.

In Jill McCorkle's new novel Hieroglyphics, Lil is eighty-five and worried about forgetting, but her childhood memories remain vivid and clear. "I can close my eyes and know every square inch," she says of her childhood home.

Oh, me, too! I dream of the 19th c farmhouse I grew up in. I know the view from every window by heart, the turning of the stairs, the weight of layers of blankets in the unheated bedroom.

"I am homesick and I am timesick...I miss all that no longer is," Lil says.

Lil is married to Frank, who is also haunted by the past, filled with "sadness and an awareness of the shadows." When he was ten years old his father died in a train wreck, extinguishing his mother's happiness. Frank is fixated on returning to his childhood home, hoping to find what he left behind.

Frank's childhood home is now occupied by single mom Shelley and her child Harvey. Harvey is fearful, misses his father, sees ghosts, and losses himself in an alter-ego superhero with a mustache that covers the scar from his cleft palate surgery. Shelley is a court reporter who is overinvolved with the trial, in trouble for writing her thoughts into the transcript.

Each character is struggling with the scars of their past. They have kept things secret, they seek to understand the mystery of their parents.

This is a dense book, emotionally charged, with a story that opens like a night blooming flower. There is darkness, with some flashes of humor and light. It tugged at my heart. And it chilled me with recognition and the knowledge that in the blink of an eye I will be Lil, leaving behind those boxes of diaries.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Hieroglyphics
by Jill McCorkle
Algonquin Books
Publication Date July, 28, 2020 
ISBN 9781616209728
PRICE $26.95 (USD)

from the publisher

Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically—lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely.

Now, after many years in Boston, they have retired in North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries—perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know. Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy. Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d rather forget. Because, after all, not all parents are ones you wish to remember.

Hieroglyphics reveals the difficulty of ever really knowing the intentions and dreams and secrets of the people who raised you. In her deeply layered and masterful novel, Jill McCorkle deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to be a father or a mother, and what it means to be a child piecing together the world all around us, a child learning to make sense of the hieroglyphics of history and memory.

Covid-19 Life: Happy Birthday to Me!

A birthday is usually when the family gets together with a meal and a cake. These days, the 'get together' is different in kind.

Some FaceTime or Zoom--or have a drive-by car parade with police escort.

I got to to to the doctor. Nothing serious, folk. But it was an excuse to stop by our son's house and see him and his partner and the grandpuppies! Sunny went wild and after she wore herself out, Ellie came up to get her time. Even Hazel the cat came out for a little pet time.

Sunny at a trip to the dog park

Ellie at the dog park

We wore masks.

The kids gave me my presents--a wonderful Jane Austen themed collection of coloring books, a Jane Austen Tea Party recipe book, new colored pencils, and a pencil sharpener that can make THREE KINDS OF POINTS!

 This marzipan hedgehog is the cutest thing!

I was able to give Melissa her birthday present, the Baby Cactus quilt and succulent pillow!

I came home to book mail! The Book Club Cookbook win The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner! Yes, still on a JA theme birthday!

Not bad.

I had a bee house from my brother to give to my son, and I had a new mask that, luckily, fits him better. The bee house my brother gave me is below.

Hubby made dinner. We bought steak. We have not eaten steak in literally years. I avoid buying beef, for my health and the health of the planet. But we had steak and baked potato and a green salad. A bit of nostalgia, as it were.

So, not a bad day, all told, considering the limitations of sheltering in place.

I will close with some terrific photos from my brother and his girlfriend's trip to the Kewanee Penninsula earlier this month.

 Cooper Harbor Lighthouse

Stay safe.

A Heart Lost in Wonder: The Life and Faith of Gerard Manley Hopkins by Catharine Randall

A Heart Lost in Wonder by Catharine Randall is part of the far ranging Library of Religious Biography. Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry is unique and memorable, full of vivid images, but I knew little about his career as a priest or his life and how it affected his poetry.

Hopkins viewed everything through his faith, finding the divine in every tree and mountain.

Hopkins developed a personal and unique philosophy to explain the power of beauty in this world through the lens of faith. The draw of beauty was so powerful, he believed it might eclipse the divine. He would go weeks with his eyes fixated on the ground in self-denial.

Drawn by the traditions of the Catholic church he converted and he believed he was called to the priesthood. 

It seems like the absolute wrong choice that Hopkins would become a Jesuit--in effect, an itinerant teacher. I can personally attest that no one can who has not lived it can fully comprehend the sacrifices of itinerary, to be removed from a place that feeds one and set in a place that kills one's soul.

A perfectionist, he the work of grading papers and teaching wore Hopkins out and allowed no personal time for his poetry or an internal life.

He responded to the beauty of Wales and the rural assignments but the cities with their poverty and ugliness were soul-destroying. He denied himself poetry but rhapsodized in his journals.

Randall's book delves into the theologies that inspired Hopkins and shows how to interpret his poetry through the lens of his faith.  I am not Catholic and I am not deeply familiar with Newman or Loyola but she presents them very well. 

It is very interesting, but difficult to comprehend Hopkin's unique view of poetry. Cooper discusses the poems as vehicles for Hopkins's theology. 

Hopkins suffered a faith crisis in his later life and died an early death.

I enjoyed the book but do not feel I could comprehend it in one reading. It is dense and deserves a deeper study.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

A Heart Lost in Wonder: The Life and Faith of Gerard Manley Hopkins
by Catharine Randall
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Pub Date 28 Jul 2020
ISBN: 9780802877703
paperback $22.00 (USD)

Happy Birthday, Mom

Evelyn A. Greenwood Ramer and daughter
Joyce Adair Ramer

July 26, 1931 was the birth day of my mother Joyce Adair Ramer to parents Lynne O. Ramer and Evelyn Adair Greenwood. She was their first child, born eleven months after their marriage, when my grandmother was only 17 years old.

Joyce Adair Ramer

Mom was born in Kane, Pennsylvania where my grandfather was a high school teacher and athletic director. She was baptized at Tabor Lutheran Church on August 30.

Mom's baptismal certificate

The family lived at 218 S. Fraley St, Kane, PA.

photo of her childhood home taken by my mother

Mom at her Kane home

 In 1934 my aunt Nancy was born.

Nancy and Joyce Ramer

Joyce and Nancy Ramer

Joyce and Nancy Ramer

Mom's Kindergarten Class in Kane, PA

In 1935 twins Don and Dave were born.

Mom's twin brothers Don and Dave Ramer

My grandfather was born and raised in Milroy, PA and the family visited his childhood home every year. After the death of his grandmother and mother, he was raised by his mother's siblings, including Annie Smithers. The photo below shows his family also visited him.

Evelyn, Charlie Smithers with twins Don and Dve, Annie Smithers,
 Joyce and Nancy in front

Joyce, Nancy, Don and Dave 

In 1941 my grandfather lost his teaching job. The family moved in with mom's Greenwood grandparents who lived in Troy, NY. Then my grandfather found work as an engineer at the Chevrolet Aviation Engine plant in Tonawanda, NY. The family moved into the Sheridan Project, wartime housing. Gramps taught at the University of Buffalo and was a deacon in the Episcopal Church.

Mom in the Projects

 In the Projects she met her lifelong best friend, Doris.

Mom loved the Big Band music, especially Glenn Miller, and was a jitterbug dancing queen at the Project dances.

Mom and Dad

Mom saw Gene Gochenour and went all-out to get his attention. They dated from the time they were sixteen.

Gene Gochenour and Joyce Ramer

Joyce Ramer and Gene Gochenour

Mom's graduation photo

Six months after mom's graduation she married my dad on January 6, 1951. It was a simple wedding, mom wearing a suit.

Mom and Dad's wedding photo. Mom's sister
Nancy is at her side.

They moved into my dad's family home, which was an 19th c farmhouse converted into apartments. Mom worked at Remington Rand in Tonawanda on a comptographer. Dad worked in the gas and service station his father had built.

the station built by my paternal grandfather
on Military Rd and Rosemont in Tonawanda NY

1865 Military Road, where I was born, house my grandparents,
my family, and my dad's sister's family

I was born In July, 1952.

Nancy, age 3

In 1959 my brother was born.

Me and my brother

Mom suffered three miscarriages between my brother and I.

At sixteen, mom had been diagnosed with psoriasis. After each pregnancy her psoriatic arthritis worsened. Over the years she lost more joint movement, unable to move her neck, her hands frozen.

Mom and Dad in the 1970s

By the birth of her first grandchild, Mom looked much older than her fifty-five years.

Grandma Ramer, our son, and Mom in 1988

Mom embroidered this clock and dad made the case
from a kit bought in the early 1960s

Mom took art classes in adult education when I was a child. I remember watching her make her first paintings. She told me what she was doing and I learned to mix oil paints to make new colors at her side.

painting by my mother

I recently found these paintings Mom made for our son before his birth.

The Royal Oak house when we moved in

In 1963 we moved to Michigan and my parents bought a house in Royal Oak. After the death of my Grandpa Ramer in 1971, my grandmother moved in with my parents and in 1972 they bought a house in Clawson.

The Clawson house

We lost Mom on April 4, 1990 to cancer. We lost Dad to non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2008. I inherited the Clawson home and we moved in after retirement. The house is haunted with happy memories. Mom putting on her lipstick at the bathroom mirror. Dad swimming in the above ground pool with our son. The knick knack shelf of great-grandmother's Hummels. Mom's paintings hang on the walls.

I love to look at mom's old photographs and her happy jitterbug days.

At Sheridan Park, Tonawanda NY

At her home in the Sheridan Projects

Mom and Dad

at her Greenwood grandparents home in Troy, NY

In the Sheridan Projects

In the Sheridan Projects

Mom loved to read and stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to enjoy the quiet house and her book. She loved music, including classical. Mom was creative. She was generous. She had compassion. Her life was a struggle with a progressive disease that required hours of personal care and left her crippled for months of the year. She was stubborn and would not budge. She loved us.

At our home on Military Rd in Tonawanda NY

Mom and Dad 1969