In a Foreign Land by Janice L. Dick My rating: 5 of 5 stars Daniel and Luise Martens have built up a successful farm in northern China. The year is 1945 and fifteen years have passed since the Mennonite villagers from Slavgorod Colony of Western Siberia have escaped their Russian oppressors (story told in The… Continue reading In a Foreign Land (review)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy My rating: 4 of 5 stars I’ve just finished reading Anna Karenina—that 140-year-old tome by Leo Tolstoy. I read it on the recommendation of another old book—If You Want to Write (first published in 1938) by Barbara Ueland. (By the way, Ueland’s book is one of the most inspirational books… Continue reading Anna Karenina (review)
Glimpses of Paradise: A Novel of the 1920s by James Scott Bell My rating: 5 of 5 stars We first meet the main characters in Glimpses of Paradise, 17 year-old Doyle Lawrence (athlete and poet) and 16 year-old Zenobia (Zee) Miller (want-to-be movie star), in the spring of 1916 in Zenith, Nebraska. Doyle, fascinated by… Continue reading Glimpses of Paradise (review)
Threaten to Undo Us by Rose Seiler Scott My rating: 5 of 5 stars When Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin meet in Yalta in 1945 to carve up the WWII German-conquered lands, someone suggests that German-occupied Prussia and Pomerania should be part of the new Poland. While Churchill demurs, fearing that this will lead to more… Continue reading Threaten to Undo Us (review)
Other Side of the River by Janice L. Dick. My rating: 5 of 5 stars Luise Letkemann and Daniel Martens have been sweethearts for almost as long as they can remember. Luise expects they will marry soon. But the spring of 1926 is not a time life goes along according to expectation for the lovers… Continue reading Other Side of the River (review)
Through the Deep Waters: A Novel by Kim Vogel Sawyer My rating: 4 of 5 stars Dinah Hubley is starting to attract unwanted attention and pressure from the after-dark visitors to her home, a Chicago bawdy house called the Yellow Parrot run by Miss Flo. That pressure ramps up a hundred-fold when, on her 17th… Continue reading Through the Deep Waters (review)
Prelude for a Lord by Camille Elliot My rating: 5 of 5 stars Lady Alethea Sutherton, main character in Camille Elliot’s regency romance Prelude for a Lord, is a social misfit, not only because of her suitorless old maid status, but because of her musical interest in the violin which is thought entirely unladylike. For… Continue reading Prelude for a Lord (review)
Miracle in a Dry Season by Sarah Loudin Thomas My rating: 4 of 5 stars When Perla Long returns to Wise, West Virginia in 1954, the single 24-year-old has a five-year-old daughter Sadie in tow. Tongues are soon wagging and Perla wonders, will she ever find a place where questions about her past don’t run… Continue reading Miracle in a Dry Season (review)
Daisies Are Forever by Liz Tolsma My rating: 4 of 5 stars The approaching Russian army forces people to flee from Heiligenbeil East Prussia in February 1945. Hurriedly packing belongings in a cart and hitching it to her bicycle, Gisela Cramer takes her three- and five-year-old nieces and joins Herr Holtzman and his elderly and… Continue reading Daisies Are Forever (review)
Life Behind the Wall: Candy Bombers, Beetle Bunker, and Smuggler's Treasure by Robert Elmer My rating: 5 of 5 stars Life Behind the Wall is a collection of three novella-length stories for the YA crowd. Each is set in part of Berlin in a different time period between 1948 and 1989. Book One, Candy Bomber,… Continue reading Life Behind the Wall (review)
Violet Nesdoly 