The Words Between Us by Erin Bartels

Peter reaches out to new girl in town Robin by giving her his deceased mother's books. As repayment, she writes him a poem about the book. Robin slowly allows Peter into her heart.

How can a book lover not love a story about books bonding people? Erin Bartel's novel The Words Between Us is filled with books--titles and authors, well-read dusty tomes and mass-market paperbacks--and conversations about books.

But, for Robin, books became an escape from the ugly truths of life, building a wall between her and the world.

"The shelf is filled with all but one of the books Peter had given me when I was a girl, each one a bottle containing some intoxicating fictitious liquor that promises to take me away from this incomprehensible chaos of real life and into a carefully plotted story.[...] Isn't there some literary cocktail that will help me escape?"~from The Words Between Us by Erin Bartels

At once point in her young life, Robin went so far as to stop talking, further constructing a protective shell. What drove a teenager to such extremes?

Robin's parents are both in prison and she cannot forgive them for abandoning her and cannot tolerate their crimes. Uprooted from her Amherst, MA, home to live with a grandmother in Michigan, she tries to rewrite her past with a new name and identity, lies that don't hold up. She is chained to her parent's legacy of notoriety.

Told in two timelines, the adult Robin watching her bookstore slide into bankruptcy and her backstory as a teenager, the novel explores themes of anger and forgiveness. There is romance and drama and friendship and threat and a reversal of everything Robin thought was true. Robin's foil is Sarah, a large-hearted girl who carries secret guilt under her party-girl persona.

The novel is set in a fictional small town on the Saginaw River in Michigan divided by a river. There is a journey that touches on all the Great Lakes, starting at Niagara Falls and ending on the sand dunes of Grand Marias on Lake Superior. The story concludes on Isle Royale, a National Park in Lake Superior. I loved all the Michigan mentions, including the Grand Rapids Art Prize and the carousel in the Van Andel Public Museum.

Grand Marias, MI on Lake Superior

I picked up on nods to Jane Austen. Robin's imagination concocts a wild story about Peter's father who later sends her out of his home--shades of Northanger Abbey! And there is Persuasion's wish-fulfillment hope for second chances.

Some aspects of the plot feel improbable, but most readers will be too involved with Robin to mind. The faith talk addresses a universal truth, and the romance is chaste.

Overall, I enjoyed reading The Words Between Us. It will appeal to a wide audience of readers: those who like appealing characters struggling with difficulties, young adult fiction readers, women's fiction, Christian fiction, and who love the current trend of bookish characters.

Sunset on Lake Superior

The Words Between us is Erin Bartels sophomore book; her first book was We Hope For Better Things; read my review here.

"I know why some books live on forever while others struggle for breath, forgotten on shelves and in basements...they might have told rollicking good tales and sketched out characters who were fun to follow for four hundred pages, but they hadn't bled. They hadn't cut themselves open and given up a part of themselves...they hadn't lost anything in the writing."~from The Words Between Us by Erin Bartels

I received access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Find a reading group guide at
 http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-words-between-us/391430

The Words Between Us
by Erin Bartels
Revell
Available Now/Sept 2019
Paperback ISBN9780800734923
E-Book ISBN9781493419302
$15.99

Black River by S. M. Hulse: Faith Quakes in the High Plains

A wife's dying request is to hear her husband bow, one more time, his tune Black River, the one he had been perfecting for years. Wes holds the violin, unable to play; his shattered, disfigured fingers long ago forgot how to find those sweet notes. The music which had saved him had been taken from him. Has Claire forgotten?

I want to go to Black River, she had asked. Belatedly Wes takes her ashes and goes back to Montana, to the place where they fell in love, the place of the 1992 prison riot that changed his life, to Claire's son who they had left behind at age 16. Where the mountains seemed like the hands of God.

With memory comes fear.

Thirty nine hours held hostage by a sociopath has haunted Wes his entire life and his torturer Williams is up for parole. Williams claims to have found faith and become a different man.

Can people change? Does 'bad blood' go from father to son? Is it enough to be right? Do we 'deserve' God? How do we find faith? Do we deserve forgiveness? What does justice have to do with forgiveness?

Hulse's first novel is a marvel, tackling existential questions through characters so richly imagined and rooted in life it is hard to believe a young woman spun them out of her imagination. The back stories are revealed in their time, woven into the story line and adding to the drama. The final meeting between Wes and Williams includes a surprise twist. The questions raised in the novel will engage you long after you close the book.

I received the ebook through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

To learn more about the author visit: http://www.smhulse.com/

Black River by S. M. Hulse
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication January 20, 2015
ISBN:9780544309876
$ 24.00
$3.99 Kindle

+++++

To Wes, the violin sang like the human voice. It had been his voice and it brought him as close to God as anything else in his life. He had a gift with the fiddle and had played with a bluegrass  band for nineteen years. His father had loved classical music; his favorite work was the Chaconne from Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor and he started each day with listening to it the way some men read the Bible or a devotional. He made Wes his violin in 1966. 

Claire, the agnostic, loved old hymns. She loved her husband's tune which she had named Black River.

Wes tried to bond with his stepson Dennis by teaching him the violin, and later he teaches troubled teen, and natural musician, Scott. 

Music plays a role in the lives of most of the main characters. 

Hulse learned to play as part of her research for the novel as well as studying and listening to the music Wes loved. I can imagine the book made into a movie where music pervades every scene.

Tunes mentioned in the novel (with audio links) include:

Salt Creek (Also known as Salt River)

Devil's Dream

Mary Morgan

Angelina Baker

Cripple Creek

Hop High Ladies (perhaps same as Hop Light Ladies?)

Old Joe Clark

Blackberry Blossom

++++

Addendum Jan 11: Hulse has shared an interview about music related to her book found on Largegearted Boy: Book Notes: 

http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2015/01/book_notes_s_m.html

+++++

An quilt made by Claire is on Dennis's childhood bed where Wes sleeps after his return. Claire had made it from red and blue scraps, finishing it when Dennis turned 12. Wes thinks that touching the soft quilt is like touching Claire, the stitches like writing, or scars. She was nimble with the needle, Wes remembers. After the riot Claire quilted only when Wes was away, embarrassed by her deft fingers and knowing what Wes had lost. 

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