The Wicked Sister by Karen Dionne

After her breakout debut The Marsh King's Daughter, Michigan writer Karen Dionne returns with another psychological suspense novel set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

The Wicked Sister is a dark fairy tale. The Cunningham Family has retreated to the deep woods after their eldest daughter Diana was identified with a mental deviancy. The youngest daughter Rachel adores her big sis and only playmate. But the games Diana directs cross the border into her sick world.

Their parents are found dead and after several weeks missing, eleven-year-old Rachel returns certain she murdered them. She checks herself into an institution. Year later, a newspaper article comes into her hands with proof of her innocence and she checks herself out and journeys back to the cabin in the woods, seeking the truth.

Now she is leery of her older sister, living with their mother's aunt who was always easily manipulated.

Because with a clarity that is almost frightening, suddenly, I remember everything.~from The Wicked Sister by Karen Dionne

The story is told in two voices by the mother and the youngest daughter, the mother's insights sharing a backstory unknown by Rachel.

It's quite a thrill ride, as dark as a Grimm's Fairy Tale. Michigan's isolated woodlands is the vivid backdrop, an environment of deep beauty and danger. Complicated family relationships are not always what they seem.

The novel shares elements of The Marsh King's Daughter in setting and with a young woman whose life is in danger.

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

The Wicked Sister
by Karen Dionne
G.P. Putnam's Sons
On Sale Date: August 4, 2020
ISBN 9780735213036, 0735213038
Hardcover $27.00 USD, $36.00 CAD

from the publisher: 

She thought she’d buried her past. But what if it’s been hunting her this whole time. 

From the bestselling and award-winning author of The Marsh King’s Daughter comes a startling novel of psychological suspense as two generations of sisters try to unravel their tangled relationships between nature and nurture, guilt and betrayal, love and evil.
You have been cut off from society for fifteen years, shut away in a mental hospital in self-imposed exile as punishment for the terrible thing you did when you were a child. 

But what if nothing about your past is as it seems?
And if you didn’t accidentally shoot and kill your mother, then whoever did is still out there. Waiting for you. 

For a decade and a half, Rachel Cunningham has chosen to lock herself away in a psychiatric facility, tortured by gaps in her memory and the certainty that she is responsible for her parents’ deaths. But when she learns new details about their murders, Rachel returns, in a quest for answers, to the place where she once felt safest: her family’s sprawling log cabin in the remote forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, 

As Rachel begins to uncover what really happened on the day her parents were murdered, she learns—as her mother did years earlier—that home can be a place of unspeakable evil, and that the bond she shares with her sister might be the most poisonous of all.

Karen Dionne

about the author:

Karen Dionne is the USA Today and #1 international bestselling author of The Marsh King’s Daughter, a psychological suspense novel set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in the U.S. and in 25 other languages. Her next psychological suspense novel, The Wicked Sister, will publish August 4, 2020. 

Karen has been active in the writing community for over twenty years. She co-founded the online writers community Backspace, organized the Backspace Writers Conferences in New York and the Salt Cay, Bahamas Writers Retreat, and served on the board of directors of the International Thriller Writers. 

Karen enjoys nature photography and lives with her husband in Detroit’s northern suburbs.

Suspenseful Reads: In the Garden of Blue Roses; Truly Madly Guilty; The Marsh King's Daughter

Summer is a good time for genre fiction, novels that are plot-driven and compulsive reading. If they have great characters, that's all the better. 

I needed something completely different to read and so picked up my Goodreads friend's novel The Garden of Blue Roses. I found it to be a stylish, creepy story with an unreliable narrator who may be insane. Thankfully, the atmosphere of horror and mayhem is mostly in the narrator's imagination, but for a final bloody deed. The story moves at a good clip, nicely suspenseful.

The novel opens just after the narrator Milo and his sister lose their parents in a freak car accident. Their father was a well-known horror writer. Both children are damaged by their childhood with a distant mother and father who used them in various nefarious ways.

Klara decides to create a garden. Milo does not support her idea, and worse, he distrusts the gardener she has hired who seems to use his charms to manipulate women clients. Milo is convinced that Henri is mimicking one of his father's murderous creations.

With many twists and turns, the plot resolves without just deserts, the wily villain mastering all.

Michael Barsa grew up in a German-speaking household in New Jersey and spoke no English until he went to school. He's worked as an award-winning grant writer, an English teacher, and an environmental lawyer. He now teaches environmental and natural resources law. His scholarly articles have appeared in several major law reviews, and his writing on environmental policy has appeared in The Chicago Tribune and The Chicago Sun-Times. His short fiction has appeared in Sequoia. The Garden of Blue Roses is his first novel.

*****

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty was a book club read, suggested by my hubby who had enjoyed the book.

Our club members mostly said the same thing: the book was easy to read, the author knew how to keep us flipping pages, but the book was pure entertainment without a message to take away. One lady wanted to edit 100 pages out of the book. Another loved, loved, loved it and said it was her favorite we had read in a while.

Then we discussed the novel for another 45 minutes. Which is interesting, since it had been decided the book had nothing really to say!

It turned out that we had a lot of strong feelings about the characters and their actions. And we talked about good and bad parenting and who was truly guilty. And how the author had perfected a style that pulled the reader along.

My hubby loved the book because it was a close study of three couples and he loves books about interpersonal relationships. I also enjoyed the book as a character study.

In the end, everyone agreed it was a nice summer read.

*****

After I read The Marsh King's Daughter on First Look Book Club, and did not win a copy of the book, I requested the galley but did not get one. It has garnered rave reviews. It is set in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan and mentions places I have seen on vacation: Tahquamenon Falls, Seney, and Newberry. Karen Dionne is a Metro Detroit author.

Last spring, I put my name on the waiting list to borrow the ebook from the library through Libby. It finally came to me this week!

I read it in two evenings, staying up late to finish it.

Helena has kept her past a secret from her husband. She needed to escape the public eye so she changed her name and created another past. Her carefully constructed world come toppling down when the police come to her door because her father has escaped from prison. Helena's husband learns she is the daughter of the infamous Marsh King who had kidnapped her teenaged mother. and held her, and their child, hostage for years.

Helena grew up in the marshes, admiring her father who taught her to hunt and survive on the land. He had a brutal side and dealt out harsh punishments.  She did not know anything else until she saw a happy family at Tahquamenon Falls--the first outsiders she had ever seen. When Helena was fourteen her mother tells her the truth, and Helena orchestrates their escape.

Helena knows she is the only person who can find her father. While she tracks her father through the territory she explored at his side we learn of her childhood and understand her turmoil. Helena knows too well her father is a narcissistic psychopath, but she also recalls how she loved him and the wilderness survival skills he taught her.

The novel is informed by Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale The Marsh King's Daughter.

Michigan is beautifully portrayed in Dionne's descriptions. The wildness, the flora and fauna, the tourist traps, and the brutal deforestation are all encountered.

The Marsh King’s Daughter is in development as a feature film.

Book Club Kit can be found at https://randomhouse.app.box.com/s/4wcjrvzj3f869qucg8gi6wxaee2rihs9

News, TBR, WIP

It's been another busy month. 

I have read 27 books so far in 2020. I finished a wall hanging this month and my yellow roses sampler quilt top is ready to be sent to the machine quilter. I finally started on an Emily Dickinson quilt.

The Wednesday Afternoon Book Club at our local library read The Marsh King's Daughter, a psychological suspense story set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Author Karen Dionne lives in Metro Detroit and we were thrilled to have her at our meeting to tell us about the book and her writing.

Before book club, my husband and I took Karen to Frittata, Clawson's wonderful breakfast and brunch restaurant.

We had a great turn out. Karen was an engaging speaker. Our meeting lasted twice as long as usual with a question and answer time and book signing after Karen's talk.

The Marsh King's Daughter has been translated into many languages; some of the foreign editions are shown below.

The next book club pick is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I haven't read it since I was a teenager. 

I was thrilled to get a different kind of 'book mail' when Lenore Riegel, author Jerome Charyn's partner, sent me the DVD My Letter to the World about Emily Dickinson. Charyn is interviewed in the film. More about it later.

Lenore also sent me Charyn's novel Johnny One-Eye set during the American Revolution!

I used a Christmas gift card to purchase the newest book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. I read the introduction to Tightrope at the library and was hooked. The story of Kristof's hometown peers whose lives ended in poverty and tragedy is moving and offers deep insight into the conditions that have created today's political landscape.

A LibraryThing giveaway arrived, Simon The Fiddler by Paulette Jiles. I read her Stormy Weather some years ago and have News of the World on my Kindle TBR pile.

Currently Reading:

• Coming to Age: Growing Older with Poetry by Mary Ann Hoberman and Carolyn Hopley; the poems are hitting me in a personal way
• A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth: Stories by Daniel Mason whose novel The Winter Soldier I enjoyed
• Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade about the London square once home to poet H. D., detective novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, classicist Jane Harrison, economic historian Eileen Power, and author and publisher Virginia Woolf 
• The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
• The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn

Books on my review shelf include:

• Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles
• Country by Michael Hughes
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• Night. Sleep. Death. by Joyce Carol Oates
• How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue whose debut novel Behold the Dreamers I read
• The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
• Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin about Branwell Bronte
• American Follies by Norman Lock from his American Novel series which I have enjoyed (The Wreckage of Eden, The Feast Day of the Cannibals, A Boy in His Winter)

I made this wall hanging from Gingiber's Thicket prints for my son.

My husband celebrated his 70th birthday in February. His older brother gifted him a Charlie Harper signed print. It's been traveling through the family as another brother first owned it!

And just for fun, here is my intrepid brother with a new friend.

Shades of Karen Dionne's upcoming psychological suspense novel, The Wicked Sister! Bears are an important theme in the novel.

Novels with a Sense of Place

I have recently two books that offer a wonderful sense of place. Vacationland by Sarah Stonich is set in the far north of Minnesota, along Lake Superior. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens is set in the North Carolina marshes. 

Vacationland with quilt Michigan Autumn by Nancy A. Bekofske

Reading Laurentian Divide through Bookish I fell in love with Hatchet Inlet and the people of Naledi lodge. I learned that the novel is based on Sarah Stonich's set of interconnected short stories Vacationland and found a copy through my local library.

If anything, I would say that Vacationland is even better than the novel. And that's saying a lot, folks. I feel like I know so much more about these characters and their experience. Hatchet Inlet becomes more "real" and vivid in these stories. The depth of human experience in all its varieties that Stonich elicits from a small group of people is profound. The stories left me heart sore and some will stay vivid in my mind for a very long time.

The sense of place comes alive through the character's love of this far north land where Chicagoans come to summer but few have the stamina to stay year round. And in descriptions that leave a visual image.

Much of the resort is pocked with neglect: a sack of mortar left leaning near a wall has hardened to its own shape, with tatters of sack flapping; a tipped wheelbarrow has a maple sapling sprung through its rusted hole. Flat stones form a run of stairs have eroded to a jumble below, and high on the plateau old cabins lean like a trio of gossips, their eaves and sills lushly bumpered with moss...Bunchberry has berried and the sumac has gone bright. A fork in the path leads to a bog, where each footprint fills with water and spindly tamarack drop yellow needles. At her feet are colorful pitcher plants looking tropical and misplaced amid the hair-cap and hornwort...Water hyacinths, leatherleaf, bog rosemary--soft and woody plants in various stages of growth and bloom and rot make for a heady decay. from short story Hesitation in Vacationland by Sarah Stonich 

Bunchberries in bloom, Upper Peninsula of Michigan near Lake Superior. Photo by Gary L. Bekofske

stones near the Lake Superior shore in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Photo by Gary L. Bekofske

I heard so much about Delia Owen's first novel Where the Crawdads Sing. I had high expectations, based on reviews by Goodreads friends. 

I found it to be a good page-turner read, with a vivid sense of place. The author's love of the North Carolina marshland shines in lovely descriptive passages. I enjoyed this aspect of the novel.

The further I read into the book, the less satisfied I was with the plot which stretched my credulity. And the supporting characters were standard stereotypes: good boy, bad boy, drunk father, a mother who has run off, the victim of societal prejudice.

It is the story of an abandoned child who shuns society and manages to survive with the help of a kindly African American family who offers her covert charity. There is a boy who loves her too much (and teaches Kya to read) but leaves her, and a boy who loves himself more and leaves her. The girl grows up to become an expert on marsh flora and fauna, illustrating and writing scientific books about the marsh. There is a suspicious death, a trial, and an unexpected reveal.

I am in the minority in rating this as an average read. Entertaining enough. The marsh is memorable and the best-drawn 'character' in the novel. But it is hard to believe that a small child would be left alone to raise herself, ignored by society, survive without incident, and grow up to become a self-educated scholar and science writer. There was foreshadowing but no real lead up for the twisted ending.

I recalled the quote from Alice in Wonderland:

“There's no use trying,” she said: “one can't believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven't had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

If you are willing to believe the impossible, Kya's story will tug your heartstrings.

The novel is filled with wonderful observations of the flora and fauna of the marsh. Kya is so connected to the land, her boyfriend knows she could not survive penned up into "civilization" and the teeming human life of the city. It is this wild world that feeds her soul.

Sandhill Crane in the Seney National Wildlife Preserve marsh, Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Photo by Gary L. Bekofske
This is the setting for The March King's Daughter by Karen Dionne

Other novels I have read this year with a sense of place include:

The March King's Daughter by Karen Dionne, set in Michigan's Upper Peninsula near Seney Wildlife Preserve

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger, set in Minnesota along Lake Superior

Marlena by Julie Buntin set in Northern Michigan near Lake Superior

Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell set on and near the Kalamazoo River in Michigan

Hard Cider  by Barbara Stark-Nemon set in the Leelanau Peninsula in Michigan

A Collar for Cerberus by Matt Stanley set in Greece

Historical fiction

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper set in Newfoundland

The River by Starlight by Ellen Notbohm set in Montana

The Winter Station by Jody Shields set in Manchuria

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason set on the Eastern Front of WWI

My Year in Reading

According to Goodreads, I have read almost 200 books this year! I had meant to read fewer books than last year--bit ended up reading more!

Here is a breakdown of my reading, not presented in any particular order except category. You can find my reviews by typing the book title in the search bar on the right side of the blog homepage. Some of the books I read in 2018 will be published in 2019. I have marked them with a *.

My reading was still heavy on current political and social issues, represented by nonfiction and fiction choices.

American History & Politics
My choices favored my interest in Revolutionary War, WWI and WWII eras, and the 1960s. 
Rush by Stephen Fried
The First Ladies of the Republic by Jeanne E. Abrams
Frank & Al by Terry Golway
In the Hurricane's Eye by Nathaniel Philbrick
LBJ's 1968 by Kyle Longley
The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by Tim Tate
The Hidden White House by Robert Klara
The Man Who Walked Backwards by Ben Montgomery
Wasn't That a Time by Jesse Jarnow
A Force So Swift by Kevin Peraino

American Inventors and Business
The great creative thinkers and the influence of business and industry on society
Tesla Inventor of the Modern by Richard Munson
Atom Bomb to Santa Claus by Trevor Homer
Wanamaker's Temple by Nicole C. Kirk
American Advertising Cookbooks by Christina Ward
Janesville by Amy Goldstein
Voices From the Rust Belt by Anne Trubeck

True Adventure
The girl in me loves a story of survival against the odds
Adrift by Brian Murphy
White Darkness by David Grann
To the Edges of the Earth by Edward J. Larson

Books on the Current Political Climate
Some pretty scary stuff!
Fire and Fury by Michael Wolfe
Fear by Bob Woodward
How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky
The Splintering of the American Mind by William Eggerton
Identity by Frances Fukuyama

Books on Inclusion and Justice
Immigration, Civil Rights for all, economic parity
Lighting the Fires of Freedom by Janet Dewart Bell
A Bigger Table by John Pavlovitch
The Opposite of Hate by Sally Kohn
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Patriot Number One in Chinatown by Lauren Hilgers\
Give People Money by Anne Lowry
Journeys An American Story by Andrew Tisch

British History
Queen Victoria by Lucy Worsley

Memoirs & Autobiographies
Inspiring stories!
The Sun Does Shine by Ray Hinton
Song in a Weary Throat by Pauli Murray
Together at the Table by Karen Oliveto
Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride
Surrendering My Ordination by J. Philip Wogaman
The Right to Be Cold by Sheila Watt-Cloutier
My Dead Parents by Anya Yurchyshyn
Call Me American by Abdi Nohr Ifrin
Calypso by David Sedaris
Becoming by Michelle Obama

Environmentalism
The Poisoned City by Anna Clark
Overrun by Andrew Reeves*
The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell

LGBT Themed Fiction
Southernmost by Silas House
Tin Man by Sarah Winman
A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne
Sugar Run by Mesha Maren*

Multicultural Fiction
Many are historical fiction. All offer insight into the human experience.
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
I Have Lost My Way by Gaye Foreman
Gateway to the Moon by Mary Morris
Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
The Mercy Seat by Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop
The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
The House of Rougeaux by Jenny Jaeckel
Half Gods by Akil Kumarasamy
There There by Tommy Orange
We Hope for Better Things by Erin Bartels
All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy
The Tyre by C. J. Dubois
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Historical Fiction About Women
The eternal and timeless experience of being female.
Learning to See* by Elsie Hooper
The Falconer* by Dana Czapnik
The Last Year of the War* by Susan Meissner
The Only Woman in the Room* by Marie Benedict
Marlena by Julie Buntin
The Latecomers by Helen Klein Ross
Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris
A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl by Jean Thompson
Transcription by Kate Atkinson
A View of the Empire by Sunset by Caryl Phillips
Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt
The Only Story by Julian Barnes
The River by Starlight by Ellen Notbohm
The Red Address Book by Sofia Lundberg
Island of Sea Women* by Lisa See

Historical Fiction
Vividly bringing the past to life through fiction.
The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason
So Much Life Left Over by Louis de Bernieres
The Wreckage of Eden by Norman Lock (a story about Emily Dickinson)
A Long Island Story by Rick Gekoski (set in the McCarthy era)
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
The Italian Party by Christina Lynch
Dust by Mark Thompson
I Will Send Rain by Rae Meadows
West by Carys Davies
The Perilous Adventures of the Cowboy King by Jerome Charyn* (A novel about Teddy Roosevelt)
Sea Chase by John Braddock (Young readers fiction about John Quincy Adams)
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

Historical Fiction with Fantasy Elements
The Cassandra* by Sharma Shields
The Bird King* by G. Willow Wilson
Ahab's Return by Jeffrey Ford
A Boy in His Winter by Norman Lock
Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury
Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami
Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

Fantasy
Circe by Madeline Miller
The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

Science Fiction
Unholy Land by Tidhar Lavie
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys

Mysteries and Suspense
The Garden of Blue Roses by Michael Barsa
An Anonymous Girl* by Greer Henricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Bring Me Back by A. B. Paris
Jack Was Here by Christopher Bardsley
The Ancient Nine by Ian Smith
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne
Truly, Madly Guilty by Lianne Moriarity
Feared by Lisa Scottoline
After Anna by Lisa Scottoline
Dead Bomb Bingo Ray by Jeff Johnson
Death in Paris by Emelia Bernhard
Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon
Marne by Winston Graham

Literary Fiction
Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Tinkers* by Paul Harding
Nothing But the Night* by John Williams
Laurentian Divide by Sarah Stonich
Vacationland by Sarah Stonich
Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
Florence Gordon by Brian Morton
Ohio by Stephen Markey
A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash
The Rain Watcher by Tatiana de Rosnay
Meet Me At the Museum by Anne Youngson
A Collar for Cerebus by Matt Stanley
All We Ever Wanted by Ellen Giffin
The Red Thread by Ann Hood
How to Walk Away by Katherine Center
Hard Cider by Barbara Stark-Nemon
The Family Tabor by Cherie Wolas
Clock Dance by Anne Tyler
The Dependents by Katherine Dion
The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman
Laura and Emma by Kate Greathead
Maria on the Moon by Louise Beech
Stoner by John Williams
The Promise Between Us by Barbara Claypool White
The Mystery by Matthew Mackintosh

Retellings of Classics
Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
Mary B by Katherine B. Chen

Humorous Novels
Limelight by Amy Poepple
#HockeyStrong by Erika Roebuck
High Noon in Hollywood by Warren Adler
Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny
The Norma Conquest by Warren Adler

Short Stories
You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld
Collected Stories by Susan Sontag
We Are Gathered by Jamie Weisman
A Beautiful Place to Die by Sam Bigglesworth

Humor
Lessons From Lucy by Dave Barry
I See Life Through Rose Colored Glasses by Lisa Scottoline

Nonfiction Inspiration
The Dark Interval by Rainer Maria Rilke
A Glad Obedience* by Walter Brueggemann

Poetry
The Flame by Leonard Cohen

Books About Books and Writers and Artists
Meg Jo Beth Amy by Anne Rioux Boyd
J. D. Salinger and the Nazis by Eberhard Alsen
Whistler's Mother by Daniel Southerland
The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt
Louisa At the Front Lines* by Samantha Seiple
Jane Austen for Kids* by Nancy Sanders
Guilty Thing by Frances Wilson
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Simply Austen by Joan Klingel Ray
The Man Who Wrote the Perfect Novel by Charles J. Shields
The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve by Stephen Greenblatt


Books About Quilts
Pattern books and quilt histories
An American Quilt by Rachel May
Southern Quilts by Mary Kerr
Landscape Quilts by Ann Loveless
Oh Scrap by Lissa Alexander
Tilda Sewing by Heart
Pin Pals by Carrie Nelson
Quilt Big by Jemima Fiendt
My First Book of Sewing
Whimsical Wool Applique by Kim Schaefer
Creating Art Quilts with Panels by Joyce Hughes
Paint By Number Quilts by Kerry Foster
A Splendid Sampler 2 by Pat Sloan
Pat Sloan's Teach Me to Machine Quilt
Intuitive Color and Design
Allie Aller's Stained Glass Quilts
Stitches from the Yuletide by Kathy Schmitz
Patchwork Loves Embroidery Too
Red and White Quilts
Antique Needlework Tools by Dawn Cook Ronnigen
Art Quilts Unfolding

Genealogy
The Researchers Guide to American Genealogy

Art
Charlie Harper's Birds and Words
The Refrain of Thomas Cole*

Books I did not finish
Sight by Jesse Greengrass
Boomer 1 by Daniel Torday
Princess: The Early Life of Queen Elizabeth II
by Jane Dismore
Imagining Shakespeare's Wife: The Afterlife of Anne Hathaway by Katherine West Scheil
The King's Favorite by John Vance

2020 Goals, WIP, and TBR

Hello to a new decade! 

I have a full schedule of book reviews coming these next few months and a long list of TBR galleys and books to read!

Right now I am reading the newly published Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, a lovely Goodreads win.

I am also reading biographies Fannie Lou Hamer by Maegan Parker Brooks and Frida in America by Celia Stahr, and Conversations with RBG by Jeffrey Rosen.  Also, Deeds Not Words, art quilts on women's suffrage from Schiffer Publications.

Just arrived in the mail is Country by Michael Hughes.

On my TBR galley shelves are:

• John Adams Under Fire by Dan Abrams
• Miss Austen by Gil Hornby
• The Sin Eater by Megan Campisi
• Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
• Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest by Ian Zach
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• Paris Never Leaves by Eileen Feldman
• American Follies by Norman Lock
• They Called it Camelot by Stephanie Marie Thornton
• Beyond the Horizon by Ella Carey

And, finally in the mail are LibraryThing wins is Inland by Tea Obreht.

My Christmas presents included Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion by Hillary Davidson.

And The American Story: Conversations with Master Historians by David M. Rubenstein.

My library book club finished up 2019 with A Gentleman in Moscow! This month we are reading Kirk W. Johnson's The Feather Thief and coming up this quarter are dynamite reads--Karen Dionne's The Marsh King's Daughter, Angie Kim's Miracle Creek, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. 

 I accepted a challenge to finally frame this needlepoint I made in 1973.

This year I am planning to continue to hone down my pile of quilt tops by getting them quilted, and to finish the tops I started, and to make the quilts I bought specific fabric for.

One of those incomplete projects is Love Entwined. I couldn't face the next border. 

Then there is Hospital Sketches and my Yellow Roses Sampler to finish! And the Thicket animals to quilt.

I also want to use stash fabrics. I'm not getting any younger and it's 'use it or lose it'! I love this Eastside Detroit find. I would like to take some of my vintage fabric stash and create something free and awesome along this line.

Our weekly quilt group had two weeks off for the holidays, then I missed a week. But look at what I got this week: a wonderful gal gave me these vintage fabrics, including some feedsacks and a Disney print of Alice and Wonderland!!!

 And on the 'free' table I found these books.

It's been a crazy winter here in Michigan with little snow. This snowman I made years ago is pleading, Let It SNOW.

But it's been cold enough that this squirrel seemed to be at the doorwall begging to be let in.

Our son's girlfriend's cat took over a basket and for Christmas I made her a pillow. Hazel the cat is pleased.

 And we gave our grandpuppy Ellie a Barkbox toy of a mug with squeaky marshmallows, which she took to bed.

The new news is that we will have another grandpuppy soon! Another puppy mill rescue from Safe Harbor, but this one a puppy!