A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf

Writers Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney were teaching in Japan when they met. They immediately connected and soon were regularly meeting and critiquing each other's writing.

As they collaborated on writing A Secret Sisterhood, they found happiness in spite of the stress. Their unfounded feared was that their 'bond between equals' would be threatened if one achieved success before the other.

When Margaret Atwood offered to write the forward for the book, it was proof that women writers do forge friendships of encouragement and support, in spite of historic stereotypes.

Jane Austen was mythologized into a happy spinster who hid her writing and relied only on her sister for support. Suppressed was her friendship with her rich brother's impoverished governess Anne Sharp, an amateur playwright.

Charlotte Bronte's friendship with boarding school friend Mary Taylor had its ups and downs, but it was Taylor who inspired Charlotte to travel abroad to continue her education. The intrepid Taylor became a feminist writer.

George Eliot, living 'in sin' with a married man, corresponded with clergyman's daughter and literary sensation Harriet Beecher Stowe. Over years, their closeness was stressed by life events, yet their regard for each other as artists prevailed.

Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield are remembered as rivals, their mutual regard and friendship overshadowed.

A Secret Sisterhood was an interesting book about the "rare sense of communion" between literary friends. One does not need to be well informed about the writers discussed for enough biographical information is included to understand the friendships in context of the authors' personal and professional lives.

I enjoyed the book and learned something about writers I am quite familiar with and a great deal about those I knew little.

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

A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf
by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 9780544883734
Hard cover $27.00

Homeschooling Days

Our son's senior year photo

The decision to homeschool our son was monumental and yet the easiest decision to make. I later realized that from the beginning I was teaching our son at home. Reading, craft activities, nature studies, museums, games, educational magazines, and making up stories were part of our daily activities.

One day while driving in the countryside he asked me what the road signs said. I explained the no passing and passing zones. He started reading the signs and telling me, "You can pass now." He's been a back-seat driver ever since!

So, we knew he was reading before he started kindergarten. At Kindergarten Roundup he was put in Pre-K. He came home from Pre-K disappointed, and asked when he was going to learn "real science."

In Kindergarten he was inattentive. The teacher asked me to come to class and observe.

Hillsdale was a rural community with a good deal of poverty. The classroom was geared for children who did not come from enriched lives. The teacher read a book, explained the book, told the students how to draw a picture relating to the book. And after that, she discussed the book again. After the first reading, Chris lost attention. He whipped off his drawing and went back to wandering around. I saw that he was bored.

First Grade was promising at first. The young teacher was resolved to challenge our son and keep him busy. Day after day when we picked him up from school she complained about his lack of attention. The school assigned an aid to offer our son special one-on-one activities, mostly reading on a higher level.

We went to a family counselor who told us that our son needed to be in "his proper peer group." He encouraged us to have the school test him.

The principal agreed to the testing, but warned that jumping grades was rarely successful. In October of his First Grade year Chris underwent testing. The principal was surprised by the results. Our son was reading on a Fifth Grade, second semester level and had the math skills of a Second grader. We agreed to jump him to Second Grade after winter break. At first, he was to spend only half days in the new class. But once he was there, he would not leave. He knew it was where he belonged.

His Second Grade and Third Grade teachers were great, and he worked hard to stay in the top of the class. He encountered teasing and rejection at first, but in Third Grade that was all behind him. The teacher was great; he sent home weekly letters to parents, took the class on a nature walk, and taught special units on interesting subjects like Great Lakes Shipwrecks. Our son made friends and joined Cub Scouts and Little League.

Then we were moved to Lansing. It was a very different environment from that of a small town.

The Fourth Grade teacher was not as interactive with parents as we were used to. In fact, she seemed detached and burnt out. He was in a pull-out program for the gifted, but the program did not give him what he needed, and it made him a target for teasing. There were not enough math books for the students and they could not be taken home to study.

Our son tried to make friends, using techniques that had worked for him when he jumped from First to Second grade. But the cliques were set and closed. Our son also had to deal with a very different social atmosphere than the small town he had known. The school included kids from the upscale neighborhood we lived in, and from the poor neighborhood just south with many children from troubled families or with fathers in jail.

Our son was depressed. We found a family counselor who spoke with our son privately. The counselor suggested homeschooling to our son at that time, as had the counselor in Jackson, MI who had encouraged the academic testing.

Chris and his friend 'pigging out'

Fifth Grade went better, with a more involved, positive teacher. Our son met another new boy in school and they became best friends.

Chris and Marianna, his exchange student sister

When Chris was in Fifth Grade we hosted an exchange student. Mariana was the oldest daughter of my high school exchange student sister, Elina. The first months they got along quite well. But when Chris and Mariana went trick and treating an argument broke out. Suddenly they were acting like a 'real' brother and sister! Before long they were fighting like real siblings, vying for my attention.

Sixth Grade brought a school change to junior high school. At first everything seemed to be going great. Chris was in a group of boys and they had a lot of fun. But when he had classes with older kids they made him uncomfortable. He asked me why they were allowed to wear clothing with bad messages and allowed to use foul language. He encountered problems with teachers who insisted on his writing reports by hand; his fine motor skills were not good and writing was hard. He wanted to use the computer and type his reports.

One day our son corrected the social studies teacher who said WWII started in 1942. That's when America entered the war, but Chris knew the war started in 1939. The teacher did not like his correcting her!

A boy was bullying our son, and one day Chris picked up a stick to keep the the boy away. There was a no-violence policy and the boy turned our son in; he ended up in detention after school, removing graffiti from the walls.

After the Columbine school shooting, mimics were everywhere. One day our son didn't want to go to school because of rumors that a boy had threatened to bring a gun to school. He was literally afraid.

Our son's MEAP score took a dip and his grades were slipping. Chris asked us if we would homeschool him. Two counselors had said he was a good candidate for homeschooling.  A science teacher told us about his daughter who had 'dual exceptionalities', being both gifted and learning disabled. He was wary of our taking on homeschooling.

I found a distance school for gifted children out of Chicago that provided oversight, curriculum ideas, records keeping, and testing for homschooling. We signed up beginning in Seventh Grade. We took our son to a local testing service and discovered his strengths and weaknesses in learning and his I.Q. score. The school counselor advised us on courses and curriculum and handled paperwork and records.

That first year involved adjustment. I was suddenly our son's mother and teacher and friend. He wanted me to keep the roles separate. I saw everything as a teachable moment.

I was in my second year working from a home office for Jostens. So I was working 30 hours a week and homeschooling and a homemaker and a minister's wife! Gary's flexible schedule meant he could teacher several subjects, including logic and mathematics. I oversaw history, science, English, Latin, and gave I Chris piano lessons.

We decided not to continue with the oversight school for Eighth Grade. Jostens wanted the Office Manager to be available more hours and they wanted me to be more active in outside and inside sales. I quit the job to homeschool full time.

We joined a homeschool group. Every fall they had a series of Field Days with games and learning activities at a park.

While some moms organized and ran the activities, along with older homeschool students as helpers, the rest of us moms visited.

The Moms

Our family was concerned that our son would not be in 'the real world,' but even the homeschool group had differences in religious and political thinking that involved getting along and respecting others, as did our church.

The homeschool group sponsored educational trips, such as visiting the local GM plant, the Lansing State Journal, and the Kalamazoo Air Museum. We took advantage of classes that taught art and pottery. I offered classes to the homeschool group teaching some basic needlework skills including coloring on fabric and Redwork quilting.

I loved teaching. I loved relearning. I loved researching curriculum and setting lesson plans. I focused on curriculum to suit his learning style. We did hire a tutor for Algebra II and a mathematics review to prepare for standardized testing. By Senior High, our son could determine his own elective subjects and set his own plans.

Since the whole family was writing, we would read and critique each other. We were sure our son was going to be 'the writer' in the family. Both Gary and I had written as kids, and of course Gary wrote sermons and articles in his work and I wrote poetry and short stories for myself.

Homeschooling was efficient time-wise. Our son was able to complete his school work in four days. Gary had Fridays off, so we would schedule family activities for Friday afternoons, going to movies and dinner, taking day trips to museums, or having a family game and pizza nights. Homeschooling made us a closer family.

A homeschool group member, Jacob, organized a role playing gaming group which met at our house. Friday evenings brought a troop of boys coming in the front door, saying 'hi', and going to the finished basement for a few hours of gaming.

Chris and Gary had been playing the Magic:The Gathering card game and even taught me. So when Chris got to college, the first thing he did was to join the Alternate Reality gaming club. He made friendships there that have lasted to this day.

We made sure our son took the PSAT test available through local homeschool groups, and the ACT and the SAT.

Sunday School class play

Angel Alert Christmas Play

Our son was active at church and in community volunteering. He worked at the Lansing library resale store, and all summer volunteered as a counselor in training at the Woldumar Nature Center. His Senior year, he won a Target scholarship for college, based on his volunteer work.

The Youth Group raked leaves at the homes of the elderly

During our son's junior and senior year in high school I was the Senior High Sunday School Teacher. I had a great deal of fun. I think the kids did, too.

Senior High Sunday School Class kids hanging in the Youth Building

When it came time to apply to college he decided to apply to Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Allendale, MI and Albion College, a small Methodist liberal arts college with scholarships for clergy children. We visited other colleges as well, including Alma and Western.

With his applications I submitted a summary of the entire homeschool records, including course descriptions with texts and reading materials. Albion College told us he was already working on a college level. He was accepted by both schools.

He was leaning toward Albion, which was close to Lansing and smaller. We suggested he visit each school again, this time to sit in on a class. Albion suggested he would have a lot of experience in journalism and the school paper there. He sat in on a literature class. But when he sat in on a writing critique class at GVSU he came out excited. That was what he wanted! And he accepted GVSU.

My homeschool mom friends 

Chris graduated a few weeks before we were moved again. The Bishop had informed Gary at the last moment that he was needed elsewhere. There was to be no questioning or disputing the move.

Our son at his graduation party with church friend Stacy

I had planned to return to work full time after our son graduated, sure I had contacts for good jobs. While homeschooling I worked several part-time jobs including a temp editing job, filling in when the church secretary was on leave, and scoring standardized tests for the Educational Testing Service from home. I continued to hone my desktop publishing skills through volunteer work as the quilt guild newspaper editor as as a school records keeper.

We thought we knew what our future was going to look like, but in the itinerant ministry, you can never be sure about anything.

Chris

The Heart's Invisible Fury by John Boyne

A novel can be transformative, for it has the ability to condense our experience and reflect what we knew back in a way that we recognize as true while enlarging our understanding and engaging our heart.

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne tells the life story of Cyril Avery, spanning seventy years between 1945 and 2015. It is the story of a young man growing up, a good but passive man who is not allowed to be a real son, an honest friend, who makes mistakes and survives horrible losses. In the end he discovers his true identity and is able to rectify relationships.

The story has its terrifying and violent moments. The dark humor brought out-loud laughter. And it has sorrows that brought tears to my eyes.

It is a compassionate book. It is a work which unsparingly attacks hypocrisy and double standards in society and the church. The worst people can do, the violence and hate crimes and prejudice is all revealed. As is forgiveness, understanding, and the vision of a state of being that will recompense our earthly losses.

I was totally unprepared for this book when I chose it as my Blogging for Books read. It was one of those happy accidents of a book finding its right reader.

The novel opens in Ireland at a time when the church controls social mores and with a harsh hand ferrets out illicit sexual activity, unwed teens and homosexuals especially.

Cyril Avery, 'not a real Avery' his adoptive father reminds him, was born to an unwed mother who was rejected by her family and parish. His birth came in a moment of terror. His self-absorbed adotpive parents gave him a home but no affection, yet he loved and accepted them. His childhood and university friend Julian was beautiful, brash, and self assured. Julian, like his father and like Cyril's father, was sexually promiscuous from an early age. He became the secret object of Cyril's affection, which Cyril does not reveal until the morning he was to marry Julian's sister.

"What was I even doing here? Years of regret and shame began to overwhelm me. A lifetime of lying, of feeling that I was being forced to lie, had led me to a moment where I was not only preparing to destroy my own life but also that of a girl who had done nothing whatsoever to deserve it."

I recalled a minister friend from long ago, smart and fun and capable, and his wife who like me was an English major at university. At annual conference we would met up and talk. Years passed and the wife was expecting their first child. The husband told her that he was in love with someone else and that he was gay. Our denomination would not appoint a homosexual, and to this day will not appoint a homosexual unless they are celibate. So, he had married a woman he loved deeply, and pretended to love her sexually as well. It was devastating, the wife faced with raising a child as a single mother, the husband waiting to hear if his career would be taken away. What that taught me was not to hate my friend but the evil that forced him to deny who he was, unable to live honestly and wholly.

"I can't excuse my actions," Cyril tells Julian's sister years later, "but I didn't have the courage or maturity to be honest with myself, let alone anyone else."

And I recalled another friend, a young man grappling with his sexuality during the early days of AIDS, whose self loathing and fear of family rejection kept him not only closeted but even dating. In these days, a woman told me she hated picking up a phone that had been used by another gay friend,  an otherwise intelligent woman.  Boyne's book addresses this too, as Cyril volunteers to visit AIDS victims and experiences the hatred and blame put on gays for the disease.

Near the end of his life, Cyril meets his birth mother and learns his story. "Maybe there were no villains in my mother's story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing."

His mother looks at her home village's graveyard and says, "All these people. And all of that trouble. And look, they're dead now. So what did it all matter in the end?" She wonders, "Why did they abandon me? Why do we abandon each other? Why did I abandon you?"

Why do we allow ourselves to be led into hate and violence? How can we look at a son or daughter, a friend or schoolmate, and allow some idea to alienate us, so we do not see the person we know but a vision of something frightening?

In the flawed, humane, and tempest-tossed Cyril perhaps we will recognize we are all fallen creatures tyring to just get through life, hoping for a moment's affection and love.

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

The Heart's Invisible Furies
John Boyne
Hogarth Books
$28 hard cover
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6078-6

The Welcome Home Diner: A Taste of Detroit

I was attracted by the cover, and then intrigued by the story line of The Welcome Home Diner, which is set in a nearly abandoned East Side Detroit neighborhood.

Cousins Addie and Samantha are part of the influx of idealistic young people flocking to the city with visions of being part of its comeback. They buy a long abandoned diner and serve up locally sourced foods, using heirloom recipes from their Polish grandmother.

The book is packed with Detroit references from the Packard Auto Plant to the Detroit Zoo, the Eastern Market to Holiday Market.

The characters are optimistic and excited about Detroit's future, and happy to be part of its transformation. They hope that the Welcome Home Diner will become a neighborhood gathering place. But the locals are fearful: gentrification brings higher taxes, and those who have stayed can't afford to pay them.

Addie and Samantha both struggle with guy problems that require a need for self-understanding and personal growth. What they learn is good advice for all.

They take huge risks beyond investing in a decimated neighborhood. They hire an escapee from human trafficking and a young man whose tragic teenage mistake landed him in prison.

Behind the hard work, flirtations and commitment issues, and endeavoring to bring locals into the diner and not just suburbanites, they are being stalked by an unknown person who is trying to destroy all they are building.

I don't read a lot of 'women's fiction' or romance or 'foodie' books with recipes. This novel certainly will be enjoyed by readers who love those genres. I do read books that incorporate social and political issues into entertaining stories. This book certainly hit that mark for me.

Book Club Discussion Questions are included as well as recipes, including Greens with Turnips and Potlikker, Cabbage Rolls,  Lamb Burger Sliders, Ginger-Molasses Bundt Cake with lemon Curd, and Heartbreaker chocolate chip cookies! Yum!

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

The Welcome Home Diner
by Peggy Lampman
Lake Union Publishing
ISBN: 9781542047821
PRICE $14.95

Author Peggy Lampman was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama but attended the University of Michigan, After working as a copywriter and photographer fin New York City she returned to Ann Arbor and opened a specialty foods store, the Back Alley Gourmet. Later, she wrote a food column for the Ann Arbor News and MLive. Lampman’s first novel, The Promise Kitchen, published in 2016, garnered several awards and accolades. She is married and has two children. She also writes the popular blog www.dinnerfeed.com.

From the publisher:
Betting on the city of Detroit’s eventual comeback, cousins Addie and Samantha decide to risk it all on an affordable new house and a culinary career that starts with renovating a vintage diner in a depressed area of town. There’s just one little snag in their vision.

Angus, a weary, beloved local, is strongly opposed to his neighborhood’s gentrification—and his concerns reflect the suspicion of the community. Shocked by their reception, Addie and Samantha begin to have second thoughts.

As the long hours, problematic love interests, and underhanded pressures mount, the two women find themselves increasingly at odds, and soon their problems threaten everything they’ve worked for. If they are going to realize their dreams, Addie and Samantha must focus on rebuilding their relationship. But will the neighborhood open their hearts to welcome them home?

The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman

I will admit, I have not read Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, and I am not a fan of books or television series about witches. Except for Bewitched, which I loved, but I was eleven years old then.

Consequently, I did not know what to expect when the publisher offered me The Rules of Magic based on my having read the author's previous books Vinegar Girl, the Hogarth Shakespeare series version of The Taming of the Shrew, and her historical novel The Marriage of Opposites imagining the marriage of the artist Camille Pissarro's parents. Based on the last mentioned book alone, I have collected quite a few Hoffman books now languishing on my TBR shelves!

What happened was unexpected, for I was instantly in love with Hoffman's language and The Rules of Magic characters. Although the novel is about three teenagers struggling with the powers and limitations of having magical abilities, it is really about universal themes: the power of love, and how we must love regardless of the costs, and that we must embrace who we are.

Franny, Jet, and Vincent are complex characters burdened with the knowledge that they are cursed to bring destruction to the men they love. As they grew up, their parents tried to protect them from self-knowledge, but they recognized they were not like other children. "It's for your own good," her mother told Franny. "What makes you think that's what I want?" Franny counters.

"What is meant to be is bound to happen," and in 1960 the children's lives change when they visit their Aunt Isabella, a contact that "inflame[s] characteristics" which were "currently dormant." And over the summer each child learns their genealogy, their abilities, and about the curse and joy of love.

The book was a joy to read, lovely and moving. I felt a deep connection to the characters.

The Rules of Magic is a prequel to Practical Magic, telling the backstory of Frances and Jet who accept their brother's granddaughter into their home. I found I did not need to know the previous book to understand and enjoy this one; it stands on its own, and without any tedious linkage to the other book.

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

The Rules of Magic
by Alice Hoffman
Simon & Schuster
Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
Hardcover $27.99
ISBN: 9781501137471

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

In 1977 when Star Wars IV: A New Hope came out my husband and I were in our mid-twenties. We loved the movie but not as much as the youth we were working with. The teens bragged about how many times they had seen the movie. The movie was more than a hit, it transformed culture.

Fast forward ten or more years, and our son was sick and restless. I brought out the Star Wars trilogy VCR tapes to entertain him. After viewing the first movie, he told me, "Thank you."

The movie is a touchstone for so many who remember when they first saw it as vividly as recalling where we were on 9-11 or the day President Kennedy was shot.

Princess Leia was a different kind of heroine, the kind I had found lacking when I was growing up in the 1950s. In my make-believe play I was always a cowboy because the cowgirls were weak and needed to be rescued. I resented it when Leia was turned into a sex object, barely dressed in that uncomfortable metal bikini.

Later, we were into Joseph Campbell and loved how the story of Luke Skywalker was a secular manifestation of the eternal hero myth.

We were fans of all the Harrison Ford movies-- from Indiana Jones to Witness. But I never idolized Mark Harmon or Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher like many did, or do. Over the years I read about Carrie's books and saw her in a few movies and heard about her personal battles. I'm not really a Hollywood bio book fan, so I did not pay much attention to The Princess Diarist until I read such glowing reviews.

I had requested The Princess Diarist through NetGalley before Carrie's death, based on the reviews I had read. Just last week I was notified that I was granted access to the book.

I always give a new book a glance. Sometimes, I keep reading, hooked. This was one of those times. I read the book in a few sittings.

"...if I didn't write about it someone else would." from The Princess Diarist

Earlier this year on my blog I shared memories of my teen years, drawing from the diaries I kept beginning at age 13. Carrie started writing at age 12, about the time I did. I found myself relating to the Carrie. At age nineteen, she was self-deprecating, uncertain, wanting to appear worldly yet wanting to be loved. How secure could a teenager be when the first thing she is told is to lose ten pounds before filming!

The memoir begins with Carrie retelling her back story, getting the role, and how her affair with Harrison Ford began. Her writing is direct with a touch of humor, and an objectivity made possible by the passing of time. Carrie admits she went into filming hoping to have an affair; there was one boyfriend in her past. Harrison was fifteen years older, and married, and not on her radar although he struck her as the iconic Hollywood star. He made her nervous and left her feeling awkward.

The next section is from the diary she kept during the filming of Star Wars: IV. The diary excerpts offer insight into her nineteen-year-old mind. It is quite heartbreaking and poignant, consisting of poems and thoughts reflecting hard lessons about love. She chose to be with Harrison, but chastised herself for choosing obsession and over emotional investment. There was no future with Harrison, their relationship without real meaning.

Teenage Carrie had great self-awareness about her choices but lacked an ability for self-determination. She has little confidence and feels worthless. She is playing at being someone she is not, and is unable to demand what she needs from the relationship. Harrison has strong boundaries, revealing little; the strong, silent type. Writing keeps Carrie together. When filming on location came to an end, Harrison returned to his family.

Forty years on, Carrie can reflect on her "very long one-night stand" and their one-sided love affair objectively. It's all in the past, she remarks, "and who gives a shit?"

The memoir next shifts to how the Princess Leia role took over Carrie's life and how she coped with the fame and demands it brought: being accessible to fans and signing autographs, listening to the stories of worship, making money off the fans, the endless Comic-Con conventions. Carrie grows old, but Princess Leia does not, and a young fan complained, "I want the other Leia, not the old one." But fans also shared stories that warmed her heart and made her feel good.

I loved the story of people asking her, "Well, you wanted to be in show business," so accept the negative side of fame. That lack of empathy riled me. I was asked a similar question once. I complained about the frequent moves and lack of self-determination that came with my husband being in the pastoral ministry. "You married a minister. You knew what you were getting into," the lady told me. "I was nineteen and had no idea about itineracy," I retorted.

We make decisions at age nineteen feeling very grown up and worldly, and then realize how little we understand about the world, or about ourselves. Carrie didn't set out to become a famous Hollywood actress. And she was not prepared.

Last of all, Carrie ruminates, sobbing, on her iconic role. What would she be if not Princess Leia? "Just me."

Find Carrie Fisher's website here.

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

The Princess Diarist
Carrie Fisher
Penguin/Blue Rider Press
Hardcover $26
ISBN: 9780399173592

Read an excerpt from the book at
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/317741/the-princess-diarist-by-carrie-fisher/9780399173592/

Our Family Hosts an Exchange Student

Mariana, Gary, me and Chris at a church dinner

When I was a senior in high school my family hosted an exchange student from Finland, Elina Salmi. Elina and her brothers were all exchange students, and Elina wanted her children to have the exchange student experience also.

Christmas 1998. My brother, Chris, Gary, Marianna, and Dad.

In spring of 1998 she contacted me. Her daughter Marianna was going to be an exchange student the coming school year. And she wanted us to host her! We said yes.

Chris and Marianna at a church party

Our son was starting Fifth Grade. Marianna was in the senior class at Sexton High School in Lansing. Our church had quite a few Sexton teachers, and many of our youth were students there.

Marianna under the quilt I made her.

Marianna was much like her mother, but with a more pronounced streak of Finnish stubborness. Whereas her mother was the youngest in her family, Marianna was the eldest child. Chris, of course, was an only child so it was an adjustment for him to have someone older in the house. As it should be, before the year was out I was experienced with sibling rivalry, ploys for attention, small fights, and the exasperation of shopping with a picky teenage girl.

Marianna helping with Vacation Bible School, June 1999.

The church embraced Marianna as one of their own. And she made friends with a great group of teenage girls at church. The youth group leaders, Opal and Tim Hanson, were wonderful friends to Marianna.

Marianna with Danielle and Michelle

At Sexton she pushed herself into uncomfortable areas, becoming involved with the school plays.

Marianna played the flute in church service.

Marianna played her flute at church

We couldn't travel as much as my family did with Elina, but we did go on local visits such as Frankenmuth, the Potter Park Zoo, the state capital, and to the ledges of Grand Ledge.

Chris and Marianna at Grand Ledge

And my dad and brother took Marianna and Chris with them to the cabin and exploring 'up north.' We also frequently visited Dad's place.

Dad repaired pin ball machines in his early retirement.
Dad and Marianna at Dad's house.

Dad, Chris, Marianna and Tom at Dad's house

Marianna went to Cedar Point with the Youth Group.

Marianna and Opal Hanson

And she went to the prom.

Dressed for the prom: Marianna, right, next to Danielle to her left

We held a big ice cream sundae party at the parsonage.

Boys from the church

Michelle, Danielle, and Marianna

Chris and his best friend

Mariana's senior graduation was at held the Wharton Center.

When packing up, Marianna had accumulated so many souvineers we had to ship a box of her things to Finland.

Back in Finland, Marianna went through her last year of high school and studied in Germany. She held a series of jobs, but when the economy tanked her employer closed.

She became active in a church group where she met a man who became her husband. In 2014 they came to Baltimore to study at their denomination's headquarters and visited us for a few days.

Kimmo Huovila and Marianna's wedding photo

Kimmo and Marianna on their visit, Thanksgiving 2014

Marianna's brother and sister also became exchange students to the U.S., but we did not host them. We thought that Elina's children should experience more than one American family and place!

Mariana's brother was hosted by a Michigan family and they spent a day visiting
with us in Lansing. Marcus with Dad and Tom.

Marianna has traveled across Europe including St. Petersburg and Budepest and she has visited Shenyang, China.

Marianna in China