Everything My Mother Taught Me

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 28 seconds

I read Everything My Mother Taught Me by Alice Hoffman on the last day of 2022 as I was alone, and I have always admired Ms. Hoffman’s prose. The short story is a haunting short story of loyalty and betrayal, a young woman in early 1900s Massachusetts discovers that in navigating her treacherous coming-of-age, she must find her voice first. I know it is a book that Jan would have enjoyed reading, and I highly recommend it.

Alice Hoffman’s Everything My Mother Taught Me is part of Inheritance’s five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. I plan to read more of this series in 2023.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Magic Alice Hoffman crafts a beautiful, heart-wrenching short story. For fatefully observant, Adeline, growing up, carries an ominous warning from her adulterous mother: don’t say a word. Adeline vows never to speak again. Her only secret. After her mother takes a housekeeping job at a  But that’s not lighthouse off the tip of Cape Ann, a local woman vanishes. The key to the mystery lies with Adeline, the silent witness.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

Mercury: A Novel

Read: January 2024

Get this book

Mercury: A Novel

by Amy Jo Burns

Today, I started reading Mercury: A Novel about a roofing family. The family’s bond of loyalty is tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town. The book is written by Amy Jo Burns, the author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner, which I read and enjoyed in 2022. I highly recommend it.

The story is set in 1990, and it follows the journey of a seventeen-year-old girl named Marley West, who arrives in the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. She is a loner who is looking for a place to belong. The first thing she sees when she gets to town is three men standing on a rooftop, and they soon become her whole world.

Marley becomes a young wife to one of the Joseph brothers, The One Who Got Away to another, and an adopted mother to all of them. Marley guides these unruly men as their mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface, and suddenly, the family’s survival hangs in the balance.

With Marley as their guide, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known or build something more substantial in its place.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding gifts made this month, I will match dollar for dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×
There Is No Place for Us

Read: April 2025

Get this book

There Is No Place for Us

by Brian Goldstone

Today, I delved into There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone, a poignant exploration of America’s escalating homelessness crisis. Goldstone’s examination of the issue’s scale, root causes, and consequences is a wake-up call, passionately arguing that housing must be recognized as a fundamental human right. His compelling narrative demands our immediate attention and action.

The phrase “the working homeless” serves as a stark reminder of the urgency of America’s homelessness crisis. In a country where hard work and determination are expected to lead to success, it is scandalous that individuals with full-time jobs struggle to maintain stable housing. Rising rents, low wages, and insufficient tenant rights have contributed to this alarming trend. Families are facing homelessness not due to a failing economy but because of a thriving one.

In his compelling and thoroughly researched book, Brian Goldstone explores the lives of five families in Atlanta. Maurice and Natalia attempt to rebuild their lives in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of Washington, D.C. Kara aspires to become an entrepreneur while working at a public hospital. Britt has secured a much-coveted housing voucher. Michelle is studying to become a social worker. Celeste works tirelessly at her warehouse job while battling ovarian cancer. Each of these individuals strives to provide a decent life for their children. Yet, one by one, they find themselves among the nation’s working homeless, demonstrating their resilience and the system’s failures.

Through intimate, novelistic portrayals, Goldstone exposes the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their children as they sleep in cars or squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, then head to their jobs and schools the next day. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—people often omitted from official statistics—showing that overflowing shelters and street encampments represent only the most visible aspects of a much larger problem.


Brian Goldstone is a journalist whose long-form reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New Republic, The California Sunday Magazine, and Jacobin, among other publications. He has a PhD in anthropology from Duke University and was a Mellon Research Fellow at Columbia University. In 2021, he was a National Fellow at New America. He lives in Atlanta with his family.



When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!

Enjoy a limited-time offer of 20% off your next book purchase at Bookshop.org!


×
Memorial Days: A Memoi

Read: March 2025

Get this book

Memorial Days: A Memoir

by Geraldine Brooks

Today, I started reading “Memorial Days: A Memoir” by Geraldine Brooks, the bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse”. In this poignant and beautifully written memoir, she explores sudden loss and the journey toward healing. Why do I choose to read novels and memoirs about loss and grief? Perhaps it’s because, as Martín Prechtel wrote in his book The Smell of Rain on Dust”, “Grief is praise because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”

Many cultural and religious traditions expect grieving people to withdraw from the world. In modern life, we frequently encounter bureaucratic obstacles and lengthy to-do lists. This is precisely what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than thirty years, Tony Horwitz—just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy—collapsed and died on a sidewalk in Washington, D.C.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two sons on Martha’s Vineyard. They lived a fulfilling life filled with meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness. Geraldine and Tony spent their days writing and evenings cooking family dinners or enjoying sunsets with friends at the beach. Their peaceful existence abruptly ended on Memorial Day 2019 when Geraldine received the dreaded phone call we all fear. The demands of life became immediate and overwhelming, leaving little room for grief. The sudden loss created a profound void in their lives.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia to give herself the time to mourn finally. She often spent days alone in a shack on the pristine, rugged coast without seeing another person. It was a space for her to reflect on the various ways cultures grieve and consider which rituals might help her rebuild her life in the wake of Tony’s death.

Memorial Days,” a spare and profoundly moving memoir, portrays a larger-than-life man and the timeless love between two souls. It exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.


Geraldine Brooks is the author of six novels, including “Horse,” “People of the Book,” “Year of Wonders,” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “March.” She has also written acclaimed nonfiction works, including “Nine Parts of Desire” and “Foreign Correspondence.” Her books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Born and raised in Australia, Brooks now divides her time between Sydney and Martha’s Vineyard.


My journey through grief has significantly helped me grow as a person by focusing on conscientious resilience. I make it a point to read and walk daily, engage in worship, and actively participate as a volunteer and a good neighbor in my community. Fourteen hundred days ago, I wasn’t sure if I could continue living or how to move forward. However, by concentrating on strengthening my resilience, I now lead a life filled with meaning and purpose. I choose to look back not on what I lost but on what I have gained.

As my friend Danny said nearly a year ago, “You are an incredible person! You are a new person! A better person! Although Jan is not here physically, she has done so much for you!

My Rabbi, Rav Uri, echoed similar sentiments during his remarks when I received the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Service Award. If their beliefs are true, much of my progress directly results from my conscientious resilience!



When you purchase a book through one of my links, I earn a small commission that helps support my passion for reading. This contribution allows me to buy even more books to share with you, creating an incredible cycle of discovering great reads together! Your support truly makes a difference!


×
Do You Remember Being Born?: A Novel

Read: September 2023

Get this book

Do You Remember Being Born?

by Sean Michaels

I started reading “Do You Remember Being Born?” by Sean Michaels, a writer who won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The novel is about an aging poet named Marian Ffarmer, a legend in the world of poetry. However, despite her success, she struggles with financial issues and her son’s inability to buy a house. Marian has sacrificed her personal relationships and happiness to pursue her career but questions whether it is worth it.

One day, she receives an invitation from a Tech Company to travel to California and work with their poetry AI, Charlotte. The company wants her to co-author a poem with their bot in a historic partnership, which clashes with Marian’s beliefs about the individual pursuit of art. However, she decides to take this opportunity, even though it makes her feel like a sell-out and a skeptic. The encounter in California changes her life, work, and understanding of kinship.

The book explores the nature of language, art, labor, capital, family, and community. It’s a response to some of the most disquieting questions of our time. The author, Sean Michaels, is a winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and his book is a love letter to and interrogation of the creative legacy. It’s a joyful recognition that belonging to one’s art must mean belonging to the world to survive meaningfully.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×
You Are Here: A Novel

Read: May 2024

Get this book

You Are Here: A Novel

by David Nicholls

I began reading “You Are Here: A Novel” by David Nicholls today. The book, written by the internationally bestselling and Booker Prize-longlisted author of One Day, is an uplifting love story about second chances. It revolves around the idea I learned from grief: sometimes, one must get lost to find their way. The main character, Michael, struggles to cope with the aftermath of his wife’s departure.

He seeks comfort in solitary walks across the English countryside and becomes increasingly reclusive, trying to escape the emptiness of his home.

Meanwhile, Marnie is feeling stuck. She isolates herself in her London flat, avoiding old friends and reminders of her selfish ex-husband. She spends her time with books, battling the feeling that life is passing her by.

A mutual friend and some unpredictable weather bring Michael and Marnie together on a ten-day hike, which both are not thrilled about. However, they find exactly what they’ve been searching for during the journey.

As they stand at the threshold of a promising future, Michael and Marnie’s journey becomes a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

By bestselling author David Nicholls, “You Are Here” is a hilarious, hopeful, and heartwarming love story. It is a bittersweet and hopeful tale of first encounters, second chances, and finding the way home.

×
Lone Women

Read: March 2023

Lone Women: A Novel

by Victor LaValle

As an amateur historian, I have always enjoyed historical fiction, especially when It helps us redefine the past to be more accurate. Lone Women: A Novel by Victor LaValle is a haunting new vision of the American West from the award-winning author of The Changeling. Blue skies, empty land—and enough room to hide away a horrifying secret. Or is there? I recommend this book.

When I began reading this novel, I was unsure where it was going or what might be hidden in the steamer trunk. I was unaware of this story and found this book a well-written account of forgotten history that must be told and shared with all readers. Stay the course as Lone Women: A Novel reveals the secrets in the Trunk and the fantastic story of lone women who lived in and prospered in the old West.

Lone Women is the twenty-fifth book I have read in 2023. Although I have surpassed my reading goal, I will continue to read.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk is opened, people around her start to disappear…

The year is 1914, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents and forced her to flee her hometown of Redondo, California, in a hellfire rush, ready to make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will be one of the “lone women” taking advantage of the government’s offer of free land for those who can cultivate it—except Adelaide isn’t alone. And the secret she’s tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing keeping her alive.

Told in Victor LaValle’s signature style, blending historical fiction, shimmering prose, and inventive horror, Lone Women is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—and a portrait of early twentieth-century America as you’ve never seen.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×