White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf

"It's so Norman Rockwell," Suzanne said. (...)Grant said, "Yeah. A little eerie. Remember the Twilight Zone episode..." from White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf

Twilight Zone, Walking Distance by Rod Serling

Willard Park is a close community filled with early 20th c Sears kit houses and family-friendly ambiance. In the center of town, there is a band shell decked out in bunting. Halloween is an all-day affair (with an implicit ban on sugar) ending with singing 1960s era folk songs around a bonfire. You know, seasonal songs like If I Had A Hammer. Oh--and everyone has their own mug at the coffee shop.

detail of Country Village quilt by Nancy A. Bekofske

It reminds me of places I have lived in, like the small city that banned fast food chains. Or the even smaller town that turned a grass-roots Halloween prank of rolling pumpkins down the hill into town into a family event, lining the street with bales of hay to prevent the pumpkins from crashing into storefronts. I remember being laughed at for my Big City paranoia, locking my house when I left and my car when shopping in town. Small towns always have a secret agreement of values to be ferreted out or learned through mistakes.

In Julie Langsdorf's novel White Elephant, Willard Park is filled with residents with roots, like Ted and his twin brother Terrance. Newcomers are expected to fit in and hold the same values.

She and the other neighbors might have forgiven them the sin of bad taste with time, but as the months wore on, the Coxes continued to disobey the unspoken rules of the neighborhood. They didn't compost. They had pesticides sprayed on their grass. They didn't join the Friends of the Willard Park Children's Library. They didn't even recycle.

The Coxes were like foreign visitors who had not read up on the local customs.

Since I had an ARC of White Elephant by Julie Langsdorf I made pencil notations in the book instead of on a slip of paper or on post-it notes. I soon realized I was underlining and circling and notating to the point of absurdity. There were so many wickedly funny lines summarizing up scenes! So many characters' inner thoughts leading up to hilarious insights! The way some people randomly open the Bible while looking for guidance, I can randomly open White Elephants looking for a laugh.

Suzanne was at the top: serious and smart. Brilliant maybe. No sense of humor. Did she have a humor disability? Why wasn't that a thing?

Country Village by Nancy A. Bekofske

Other lines struck home--too close for my comfort. Was Langsdorf thinking about how I felt thirty years ago--or her character Allison--when she wrote,

It was stressful being a mother these days, increasingly so. Mothers who chose to stay at home were so well educated--and so ashamed about not earning a paycheck--that they put every ounce of their abundant energy into mothering, determined to get results.

Ted and Allison Miller and Nick and Kaye Cox were on a collision course with destiny, impelled by their personal fatal flaws.

It all started when Nick and Kaye Cox and daughter Lindy moved next door to Ted and Allison and daughter Jillian. Ted grew up in Willard Park. Allison is photographing the town with hopes of making a book. They love the vintage time-loop 'Twilight Zone' vibe.

Nick has a vision of turning the Sears houses into upscale palaces. As a Washington D.C. suburb, it would make the community a magnet--and make his fortune. He turned his charming house into a towering abode filled with the biggest and best money can afford. He started a new showcase home to sell before running out of money, the house nicknamed the White Elephant.

My little city is proud of our Sears kit homes and a page is included on the city web page. But as house prices have risen, young people can no longer afford our neighboring cities and our houses are in high demand. Many have been torn down and replaced with huge 'farmhouse' style buildings that take up most of the lot, towering over the neighboring houses.

Not only is Nick changing the town Ted loves, but he is also cutting down trees, including one Ted planted when Jillian was born! Ted becomes obsessed, patrolling the neighborhood, seeking out fallen trees and other evidence of Nick's crusade to destroy Willard Park. He can't relax and it's affecting his ability to give his wife the physical attention she desperately craves. Leaving Allison with an obsession of her own: their neighbor, Nick Cox.

Meanwhile, Kaye Cox is lonely for her old friends; she always made friends so easily, but she feels shut out and shunned in this closed town. Lindy Cox takes up with the studious Jillian Miller, intent on making her 'cool.' Lindy gets everything she wants and lacks self-discipline and self-control. Jillian allows herself to be taken up into Lindy's world of unlimited consumerism and pleasure and rules-breaking.

And then there is Ted's loveable twin brother, Terrance, who lives in a group home.

A new couple comes into town, Grant and Suzanne with son Adam. Grant is carefree and fun (especially when high) and unreliable, while his wife is a perfectionist intent on keeping his nose to the grindstone. They were forced to move into a small bungalow after Grant lost his job at the law firm.
Needless to say, their marriage has been under stress.  Now, Suzanne has an unplanned pregnancy. They become caught in the middle of the battle between nostalgia and progress.

The novel works up to an exciting climax and unexpected reveal and finally, a happy resolution.

I loved Langsdorf's comedy and I loved her insights into human nature and the values battles in a small town that reflect the larger national tensions. Do we look to the past or the future for the betterment of our society? How can rampant consumerism and environmental protectionism exist side by side? Can we find or build community in a mobile world were the average person moves a dozen times in their life? How do women balance the need for personal achievement and motherhood?

I received an ARC from the publisher through a Goodreads giveaway. My review is fair and unbiased.

White Elephant
by Julie Langsdorf
Ecco/Harper Collins
Publication March 2019

Hard Cider

At age fifty-four, Abbie Rose decides its time to follow her long-held dream: to produce hard apple cider on the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan where her family has vacationed for over twenty years.

Situated on Lake Michigan's sand dunes, the family cottage had been their escape from the high-pressure life of Ann Arbor, Michigan where Abbie taught and her husband Steve had a law practice. With a windfall of money, Abbie has purchased a farmhouse and outbuildings and is ready to learn the skills needed--business and professional--to create a quality product.

Abbie's dream is not Steve's dream. He not only has no interest in her plan, he thinks it is a bad decision. He likes Ann Arbor life.

Their marriage has been challenged before. First, battling infertility and through failed treatments and in-vitro fertilization and grappling with the decision of surrogacy vs. adoption. And secondly, when their house burned down right after Abbie finally gave birth to a son after adopting two other boys.

As Abbie forges ahead with her plans, living Up North while Steve stays in the city, her attention is further divided by her boys' personal problems and challenges. Then a young woman, Julia, arrives in Northport whose secret will bring further turmoil and tension in Abbie's life and marriage.

Barbara Stark-Nemon's novel Hard Cider has a distinct Michigan flavor, reflecting her life in Ann Arbor and Northport.

Apples from the trees in my backyard

Michigan ranks as the second or third state in apple production and has more farm and fruit stands than any other state.

And where there are apples, there is apple cider!

Hard Apple Cider is a leader in the craft brew industry, especially in Michigan. Michigan is already fifth in the nation for its number of breweries, microbreweries, and brewpubs.

So, Steve's objections aside, Abbie is onto something. And she needs the challenge and she needs to at least try and make her lifetime dream come true.

Readers who are not interested in Michigan and our apples will find their interest perk up when Julia comes on the scene. Abbie must juggle the needs of her sons and husband and the secret she discovers while holding fast to her dream.

Fans of women's fiction will enjoy Hard Cider.

Oh, and there is knitting.

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

Hard Cider: A Novel
by Barbara Stark-Nemon
She Writes Press
Pub Date 18 Sep 2018
PRICE $16.95 (USD)
ISBN 9781631524752

*****

My one complaint is: Abbie, you must be CRAZY to love to walk along the Lake Michigan beach in WINTER. I did that for ten minutes ONCE in October and that was brutal! At least in winter, perhaps you don't get sand in your nose.

Lake Michigan at Pentwater during Hurricane Sandy

Winter in Pentwater is not for the faint-hearted. Which is why we only lasted one winter...

The bars were at least open.

We had to dig the mailbox out every day.

Perhaps Abbie benefited because Northport is on the 'sunrise side' of the Leelanau Peninsula...and protected from the Lake Michigan gales that assaulted our house.

So, I'll give Abbie the benefit of doubt regarding her sanity for leaving Ann Arbor to go Up North in winter.

Except.. the driving on the west side of Michigan downstate can also be brutal...

Christmas Day, 2013 driving from Lake Michigan to Grand Rapids...

Clock Dance by Anne Tyler

"From beginning to end, she thought, she'd done everything wrong."-Clock Dance by Anne Tyler

Second chances, do-overs, reinventing oneself, rebirth, awakenings--are they wish-fulfillment fantasies? Can we change our lives? Or are we wound up by childhood experiences and genetics and parental models to whirl across the stage of a life we have no control over?

This is the essence of Anne Tyler's novel Clock Dance, the story of Willa, a woman who comes at life slant, passive and bending.

The story follows the life of Willa from her childhood in 1967 and through marriage and motherhood, the loss of her spouse and remarriage. She has never asserted her own needs, doing what is expected or what keeps others happy.

A phone call from a stranger informs that her son's ex-girlfriend has been shot and the neighbor is tired of caring for the girlfriend's child, Cheryl. The neighbor thinks Willa is the girl's grandmother. Willa has longed for grandchildren and decides to leave Arizona for Baltimore to care for the child. Her husband disapproves.

What happens in Baltimore changes Willa's life.

I read the novel in a day, enchanted by the characters and Willa's journey of discovery.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through First To Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Clock Dance
by Anne Tyler
Knopf Publishing Group
Publication July 10, 2018
ISBN: 13 9780525521228

SPOILER ALERT VERSION
After a Goodreads friend complained I told too much, I excised the following from my review.

The story begins in 1967 when Willa and her younger sister are children. Their mother is temperamental and unreliable, their father long-suffering and depressed. Willa picks up the pieces when her mother disappears for days at a time.

Ten years later finds Willa surprised to be the love interest of the older Derek, a jock and BMOC, "rescued from handsomeness" by freckles. He pushes her into leaving school to marry him, and pregnancy soon derails her plans to finish her degree. Derek's fatal flaw of angry impatience with others brings an early and tragic death, leaving Willa with two children to raise.

"Now she settled into the dailiness of grief-not that first piercing stab but the steady, persistent ache of it, the absence that feels like a presence."

2017 finds Willa remarried to Peter, an older, childless man, a successful and handsome lawyer who, though retired, still puts his business first. Peter is condescending and self-centered. Willa's children are grown and her sister is emotionally and physically distant. Willa is struggling to find meaning and purpose in her life.

A phone call from a stranger informs that her son's ex-girlfriend has been shot and the neighbor is tired of caring for the girlfriend's child. The neighbor thinks Willa is the girl's grandmother. Willa has longed for grandchildren and decides to leave Arizona for Baltimore to care for the child. Peter thinks she is crazy.

Nine-year-old Cheryl is no poster-child with her round tummy and pudgy cheeks. She loves baking and the Space Junk cartoon series. Cheryl is also wise and grounded. And looking for a grandmother in her life.

As Willa becomes enmeshed in Cheryl's world and neighborhood, she defies Peter's demands, until she must decide how she will spend the last of her life.

The River by Starlight: A Story of A Woman's Hope and Resilience

"The evening star, multiplied by undulating water, like bright sparks of fire continually ascending." The River by Starlight, from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau, June 15, 1852

Annie made the quilt for her future husband, for his eyes only.

There was a block with a sliver of chrome orange moon and a fabric with a chrome yellow shower of stars. The twilight sky was represented with a dark sapphire with a swirl of white dots and a cadet blue shot with white. At the bottom curved a river in green fabric. She called it River By Starlight.

In 1911 Annie Rushton had received a letter from her older brother Cal, inviting her to come to Montana where he had settled. At age 26, Annie was living with her mother after postpartum psychosis destroyed her marriage and separated her from her baby daughter.

Annie hopes that Montana will bring the freedom she craves and the new beginning she desperately needs. Annie travels light, only taking her ivory knitting needles, her Emily Dickinson inscribed "with everlasting love" by her ex-husband, and her grandmother's rose glass jar.

She never expected that Montana would bring a man who would claim her, body and soul, or imagine the ecstasy and the crippling pain and loss their love would endure, driving Annie to a desperate choice.

Ellen Notbohm's novel The River by Starlight is based on true events which she spent years researching. Notbohm wanted to give voice to the women, who a hundred years ago and with few resources, suffered mental health issues in a male-dominated health and justice system.

Annie is an amazing character, strong and feisty, quick-witted and quick-tempered. I loved the dialogue between the characters. Although Annie suffers many losses, she also is resilient and a survivor. The misunderstandings between men and women and the compromises they make ring true. The writing is gorgeous.

Readers will be swept back in time and won't soon forget the vivid characters.

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

The River by Starlight
by Ellen Notbohm
She Writes Press
Publication: May 8, 2018
$16.95
ISBN: 9781631523359

Learn more about the publisher, She Writes Press, at
 https://shewritespress.com/about-swp/

Limelight by Amy Poeppel

The Story

When the Brinkley family left Dallas for Manhattan, Allison had stars in her eyes, dreaming of the excitement and romance of living in the city.

Reality soon set in: their apartment was cramped, the kids had adjustment problems, and finding work as a teacher proved problematic. Even her fashion sense is out of sync. 

While her husband Michael appears on Humans of New York, Allison struggles with one problem after another. The moms gathering at the school shut her out. Her one NYC friend from college days is her opposite: single, childless, fierce, self-confident, inappropriate, and brass. But she also knows what it takes to survive in the city.

"But here we were, barely over a week in, and so far, life in Manhattan was making one kid a pervert, one a depressive, and the other an asshole."

Then, an accident brings Allison crashing into the life of spoiled, teenage pop star Carter Reid and her motherly instincts take over. Allison finds her Teacher-Mom inner superhero. 

Can good parenting, discipline, tough love, and a support system turn around the alcohol- and drug-addled, promiscuous, angry boy? Carter is under contract to perform in a new musical based on Charles Chaplin's movie Limelight, but he is on track to crash and burn.

"All I knew...was that there was a badly injured, wildly famous teenager who was completely unsupervised and alone...What I wanted to know was why wasn't anyone looking after him."

My Reaction

Poepple has written a very funny novel, with some hilarious scenes and character insights. "The subway smelled like pee," Allison thinks, and I was transported back to my mass transit days. I could smell those subway steps. 

The further into the novel I got, the more addicted I was. I loved the characters along the way, such as the 'butler' Owen, pronounced 'Wen, and Allison's adult student Howard who doesn't understand poetry. Daughter Charlotte plays a major role as a teenager unimpressed by Carter's fame but who can speak his language. 

Along the way, she extols the virtues of family, positive support, educating for content, and understanding the teenage mind by looking past the behavior to discover the conflict beneath. 

Getting Personal

Moving, well, as much as I hate using the word, moving sucks. I know. I moved as a child, then twelve times as an adult, plus I saw our son's adjustment to a move. Relocation involves starting over in a foreign territory, creating a new support system of friends by breaking into concrete-set cliques. 

The Brinkley family's experience rings true. Was it a good idea? What happened to my kid's grades, why the behavior problems? Why don't my skills and experience translate into the new work culture? In my experience, it takes two years to adjust. The Brinkley's did it in one.

I did not know any of the pop music quotes at the chapter beginnings. But I am very familiar with Charles Chaplin's 1952 movie Limelight.

Mom had a 45 record of an orchestral presentation of The Song From Limelight, the Terry Theme 'Eternally.'  I loved it, the wistful and hopeful rise of the music, the violin's plaintive voice just before the end. As a young adult, I had the chance to see the film on the large screen at a West Philadelphia repertoire movie theater near the University of Pennsylvania. 

Sheet music for the Academy Award-winning Theme from Limelight

Calvero: That's all any of us are: amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else. from Limelight

Fame, celebrity, and show business are at the heart of Limelight. An aging thespian, played by Chaplin, discovers Terry, played by Claire Bloom, a wannabe ballerina, who has tried to kill herself because she could no longer walk. He nurses her back into health and mental wholeness. She believes she loves him. Chaplin has a chance at a comeback but finds the role is an act of charity. Meanwhile, he learns that Terry had helped a struggling musician, played by Sidney Chaplin, who loves her.

Carter Reid was hired to play the romantic, young musician, who he considers a loser.

"Life can be wonderful if you aren't afraid of it." Calvero in Limelight

Claire Bloom and Charles Chaplin in Limelight
https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/04/24/charles-chaplins-limelight/

Chaplin's movie has its comic moments, beginning with Calvero's drunken walk home, an act Chaplin had perfected as a youngster in the Music Halls. But the overall impression is serious and personal, a look into the soul of the actor.

"Time is the great author. It always writes the perfect ending," a character in Poepple's novel quotes from Limelight.

And Poepple's Limelight has a perfect ending, too.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley.

I have the author's previous novel Small Admissions on my Kindle and now I can't wait to read it!

Limelight: A Novel
by Amy Poeppel
Atria Books
Pub Date 01 May 2018   |
ISBN 9781501176371
PRICE $26.00 (USD)

The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie

The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie has the description: One Sewing Machine. Two Families. Three secrets. Four generations.

The author was a career nurse turned fabric dyer and textile enthusiast. She was inspired to write this novel by a Singer 99K found near the Singer sewing factory where it was made, which she purchased for 20 pounds.

The Sewing Machine was crowd funded by subscription and published through Unbound. Readers can pledge for a book at unbound.com.

I thought it would be interesting to read a book that was published this way, and of course the focus on home sewing was a perk.

The story, set in Scotland, begins in 1911 and jumps across the century to 2016.

The world of each time setting is described, from the fortnightly shampoo and set to the refillable compact for woman’s facial powder, the rise of unions and WWI. As character Connie thinks, "the constant push to re-do and change was overwhelming sometimes." Characters must adapt as the century brings huge changes. Nurses leave off starched hats and cuffs and pinned aprons for zipped uniforms and paper hats. I never considered the huge learning curve required when the hand cranked sewing machine was replaced by electric.

As an American, I was Goggling a variety of things to find their American equivalent. I got that a broadside was a newspaper and understood the concept of a boot sale. (That is not about low prices on winter books, but a flea market out of car trunks!) I had no idea of what a kirby grip is: it is a bobby pin.

In 1911 the Singer sewing machine factory workers in Clydebank, Scotland, organized for a strike. Factory worker Jean’s boyfriend Donald is a union organizer. Scientific Management was the new business model with its emphasis on efficiency and profit. The result was decreasing the number of workers thus increasing the work load.  Jean’s father is anti-union and he turns her out of the house. When the strike fails, Jean and Donald leave town. But first she hides a secret note, wrapped tightly around a bobbin that is inserted into a new sewing machine. During WWI Donald "takes the king's shilling" and joins the service.

In 1954 Connie, a nurse, is living with Kathleen, who has always sewn on an old Singer sewing machine which her first husband purchased for her. It outlasts the 1963 electric model bought by her second husband Alf. Connie decides to seek employment in the sewing department for the local "co-operative" hospital.

In 1980 Ruth is a nurse at the hospital. Unmarried and pregnant, she has been rejected by her parents. Jean has an accident and ends up in the hospital. She has a letter to be mailed and Ruth agrees to handle it. Meantime, a woman from the sewing department helps alter Ruth's nursing uniform to hide the pregnancy.

In 2016 Fred has inherited his Granda Alf’s tenement apartment, complete with a cat and an old Singer sewing machine. Three generations have lived in the flat. Fred is unemployed and when he considers keeping the flat his girl dumps him. He learns to use the old Singer to remake Granda’s clothes and shoe bags for the neighbor kids.

The multiple time and story lines are a bit confusing at times, but this kind of plot structure is not unusual today. The scenes are full of period detail, told with a loving nostalgia about the old ways. Mysteries and relationships are revealed in the end, all tied to the Singer sewing machine.

Readers who are sewers will particularly enjoy this book, but also those who enjoy historical fiction, woman's fiction, and character-driven plot lines.

I revived a free book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher:

It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, in Edinburgh, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than 100 years after his grandmother's sewing machine was made, Fred discovers a treasure trove of documents. His family history is laid out before him in a patchwork of unfamiliar handwriting and colourful seams. He starts to unpick the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.

Sewing Machine
by Natalie Fergie
Unbound Digital
Pub Date 17 Apr 2017 

As Bright as Heaven: Surviving And Thriving

In 1918 the Bright family leaves a tobacco farm in Quakertown, PA to move to center city Philadelphia. The father is to work for his uncle's funeral parlor, which he would then inherit. They have suffered the devastating--but at that time all too common loss--of a baby. Their grief travels with them into their new life.

In the autumn of 1918 the Spanish Influenza hits Philadelphia, leaving over 12,000 dead in its wake. The mortuary fills and the uncle dies. When a daughter falls ill, the mother keeps her alive but, worn down, succumbs and dies of the disease. Friends die, and a beloved neighbor leaves for the trenches of France. Amidst all this loss, one of the daughters rescues an infant in distress in a house full of the dead, and the child becomes the family's heart and reason to go on.

The women, the mother and her four daughters, speak in alternating chapters, their unique personalities and perspectives revealed through their own words. Philadelphia has a distinct presence, although fictionalized and geographically ambiguous at times. (The cover photo shows Logan Circle with City Hall in the background.) The time period, between 1918 and 1926, covers the flu and the war but also prohibition and the rise of the speakeasy.

The story is about people who suffer great loss and live through horrible times, who carry their ghosts and demons with them, until they are able to see that life goes on and somehow the world can be bright again.

My Goodreads friends have rated this a four or five star book and found it very engaging. So I will safely say that readers of historical fiction and woman's fiction will enjoy Meissner's book.

SPOILER ALERTS

I had several issues with the writing.

I lacked emotional connection to the characters. It could be the multitude of voices, but I think it was because the story is too much told and not enough shown. For instance, one daughter develops a crush on an older man who goes to war. He is gone for the bulk of the novel, and returns at age thirty-eight and the girl is still "in love." There is not enough interaction between them to make me believe she is "in love" with him for life. It seems contrived.

I found the book preachy and full of clichéd lessons. The ex-soldier, once returned home, consoles his now grown-up lover that the war was horrible and he had to heal. All this healing happened off camera and lacks emotional impact; he is just telling her a lesson he learned. Make peace with the past, he advises. Later, the foundling brother's family is discovered to be alive. The father forgives the Brights, saying that he was angry for a long time by his losses and is finally seeing there is good in life, ending with the old chestnut of 'we are all doing the best we can with what we have'. Nothing new here, kids.

And the story wrapped up with far too many predictable and implausible outcomes. I won't even go into them. There is talk of fate and destiny and finding patterns.

END OF SPOILER ALERT

Consequently, although I had looked forward to reading As Bright As Heaven, especially for its setting and the time period, I found the book an average read. For those who are not familiar with the Spanish Influenza, who like feel-good endings, and who want the horror of history softened by wish fulfillment romantic endings, this is the book for you. It was not my cup of tea.

As Bright as Heaven
by Susan Meissner
Berkley Publishing Group
Pub Date 06 Feb 2018
Hardcover $26.00
ISBN: 9780399585968

And a Little Child Shall Lead Them: Only Child by Rhiannon Navin

Zach is seven years old when his world collapses. A mentally ill man enters his elementary school with a gun. One of those murdered is Zach's ten year old brother Andy, a bright and vivacious child with Oppositional Defiant Disorder whose management had already stressed their parent's marriage. They are unable to agree on anything now: the mother bent on revenge, the father showing understanding of Zach's regression while he goes to work and carries on.

Zach is left on his own to deal with the conflicting feelings he is experiencing. In his secret hideout in Andy's closet he colors his emotions on separate paper; they are easier to handle this way. Red for embarrassment for peeing in bed like a baby. Black for for being scared and the bad dreams at night in which he relives the day of the school shooting. Green, like the Incredible Hulk, for anger. Gray for the sadness, like clouds on a rainy day.

He also returns to his favorite book series in which children learn the secrets of happiness.

Rhiannon's debut novel Only Child is written in Zach's voice, told from his perspective. The adult world feels distant and nearly unmindful of his existence. As adult readers, we understand the hints that pass over Zach's understanding. And we are heartbroken for Zach and for his parents as well.

It is marvelous that Zach is the moral compass of the story. He demonstrates a wisdom that the adults lack; caught up in their own pain they are oblivious to each other's needs. Zach seeks for healing and wholeness, and as the novel ends with Christmas time arrived, he is truly the light which comes to show the way to salvation for his broken family: forgiveness, kindness, thinking of others, and clinging to love.

The journey into the horror of a school shooting resolves by showing us how to live in this world. In the end, I was glad to have read this book, even now in mid-December when others turn to light holiday fare.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through First to Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Only Child: A novel
By Rhiannon Navin
Hardcover $25.95
Knopf
Publication Date: Feb 06, 2018
ISBN 9781524733353