Bookin' It Thru Life

Borrowed this one from a friend of mine.  Per the cover this is based on a real-life scandal in which the director of a Memphis based adoption agency kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country.  Part of the story is set in the late 30s and early 40s, as an itinerant family finds itself on the brink of disaster when the mother's pregnancy brings attention to presence of children who would be lucrative additions to the adoption agency's rolls.  In the present day, a young woman finds some curiosities in her family history and tries to put generations old pieces together.  Worth a summer read if you have the time and inclination. Rating:  #5 Good Enough

Part mystery, part horror story, part family drama- grabbed this one off the bargain rack at B&N and had very low expectations.  Turns out, it exceeded expectations.  Emma and her sister disappear on the same night under mysterious circumstances.  The mom's a little crazy, the stepdad's a little off, the father's a little out of it...when Cass shows up three years later with her own agenda, no one knows what is going on, including the reader.  The story works and I found myself proposing possible outcomes right along with the detective.  Winning mystery of the year?  Probably not.  Worth reading at the beach?  Sure! #4-Liked It

When Barbara Kingsolver comes out with a new novel I always take a peek.  I know some people lover her stuff...I have loved some of her stuff, but some I found just passable and some simply unbearable.  This one was fine...the story is split between the present time where a middle aged woman is living through a difficult year on the heels of having briefly experienced a time when she had everything she ever wanted and the post-Civil War period where a young man is coming to terms with his life as a groom and provider in an equally unstable time of life.  Both families live on the same property more than a hundred years apart and the title refers to the significant issues with their homes-both are "unsheltered": " Nesting was ludicrous, given the doomed state of the nest " Kingsolver undeniably has a way with words and I enjoyed present day Willa's story very much.  Part of her story was grieving her mother ( "when someone mattered like that, you didn'...

Got this recommendation from a Facebook friend.  Its about Jefferson Davis's wife, Varina (or "V" as she is referred to in the book), and is told in parallel time frames, one as she and her family flee post-civil war Richmond and the other of her childhood, youth, courtship, marriage and life leading up to the war.  Its also in large part about James, a young black boy who was part of Varina's household in during the Civil War.  The two are reunited many, many years after the war as James tries to find his own lost story which includes his time as companion to the Davis children and foster son to Varina. Since the book is about his wife, Jefferson Davis is portrayed not so much as the President of the failed Confederate States (or the fleeing traitor that he eventually became) but mostly as a (somewhat disinterested) husband and father.  Frazier's Varina is an opium aficionado, though she claims to be an amateur, not a professional, a self-proclaimed victim of t...