Marilyn's Bookshelf

October 2011

Creek. Ann Howard, The Magic of Ordinary Days    

     An arranged marriage in 1944?  But that is the premise of the novel, as Olivia Dunne (Livvy) greets her husband-to-be for the first time on the day of her marriage in a small farming community in Colorado.  This all occurs on the backdrop of the ending years of World War II.  Livvy, who has grown up in Denver and has always pursued knowledge with a vengeance, finds herself married to a kind but silent farmer, Ray Singleton, in the middle of nowhere.  But there is a surprise that we learn about Livvy, which drives the rest of the novel. While living on the farm, Livvy meets two Japanese/American sisters who are living with their interned Japanese parents in a nearby internment camp.  They have much in common, but the sisters unwittingly involve Livvy in a precarious situation involving two German POWs from a nearby prison camp.  However, the most poignant part of the book is the evolution of the tenuous relationship between Livvy and her husband Ray.  Ray, so caring and shy, never pushes, never oversteps the thin line between them.  As he says to her finally, he will wait long enough for her to forgive herself.  I read it in a day.

Marilyn's Book Shelf

September 2011

Henry, Sue, Murder on the Iditarod Trail

                 The mystery and romantic elements are fairly predictable, but the information about the Alaskan Iditarod race is fascinating.  For those of us who just think a driver/musher hops on the sled and travels for over a thousand miles, we are greatly mistaken.  The amount of training, race-specific breeding of dogs, regulations for the race, checkpoints, required gear to be carried on the sleds, length of rest stops for drivers and dogs, is information that most of us have never heard.  Reading this mystery is probably more interesting than simply reading something about the race itself.  Actually, I couldn’t put it down.