The Secrets We Left Behind

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Read: March 2022

The Secrets We Left Behind

The Secrets We Left Behind by Soraya M. Lane is a historical fiction that raises the question, where were the women after Dunkirk and the fall of France? When World War II appeared to have been lost with a Nazi victory. Ms. Lane watched the movie Dunkirk and then researched that time and the women’s possible roles during that difficult moment in history.

She connected the evacuation at Dunkirk to the Massacre at Le Paradis, fifty miles away, to connect a British nurse and two French women whose strength helps them survive Nazi-occupied France. Three British male soldiers, two of whom survived the massacre and one who escaped Dunkirk, have secondary roles in the novel.

The Secrets We Left Behind is the story of the three strong women and their efforts to survive the occupation while hiding the three soldiers. This focus on the role of women has been long overdue in history. Ms. Lane, who studied to be a lawyer, has found a career as a writer. The Secrets We Left Behind is the first book I have read, but it will not be the last one by Ms. Lane that I read.

I strongly recommend this book!

The Goodreads synopsis provides an overview of the novel.

How far will they go for family, friendship, and love? Occupied France, 1940. When the staff at a field hospital draw straws to find out who will join the evacuation from Dunkirk, Nurse Cate is left behind. But when the Nazis arrive to claim prisoners of war, she takes her chance and flees into the night, taking one patient with her.

Fifty miles away, the surrendering soldiers of the Royal Norfolk Regiment are shot dead by the advancing Germans. Beneath the pile of bodies, two men survive, crawling to the safety of a nearby farmhouse, where sisters Elise and Adelaide risk their lives to take them in. When Cate, too, arrives at their door with her injured soldier, the pressure mounts.

The sisters are risking everything to keep their visitors safe. But with the Nazis coming ever closer and relationships in the farmhouse intensifying, they must all question the sacrifices they are willing to make for the lives of others. How far will they go for family, friendship, and love?

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Read: November 2024

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Year of Wonders: A Novel

by Geraldine Brooks

I started reading “Year of Wonders: A Novel” by Geraldine Brooks today. It is a compelling story set in 17th-century England about a village that quarantines itself to stop the spread of the plague. The book is written by the author of “The Secret Chord” and “March,” both of which won the Pulitzer Prize. Inspired by the events in Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, “Year of Wonders” offers a richly detailed portrayal of a significant historical moment.

The plot begins when an infected bolt of cloth arrives from London, bringing the plague to an isolated village. A housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna’s perspective, we experience the fateful year of 1666 as she and her fellow villagers confront the outbreak of disease and the rise of superstition. As death visits each household and villagers turn from prayer to fear-driven witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to face the breakdown of her community and the temptations of forbidden love. Her struggle for survival and growth transforms a disastrous year into an extraordinary “year of wonders.

Written with remarkable emotional depth, the novel introduces, according to The Wall Street Journal, “an inspiring heroine” and skillfully weaves themes of love and learning, loss and renewal into a captivating and unforgettable narrative.

Read: February 2026

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Private Rites: A Novel

by Julia Armfield

From Julia Armfield, the beloved and award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, comes a speculative reimagining of King Lear. Private Rites centers on three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a world that is drowning. It has been raining for so long that the landscape has reshaped itself, and old rituals and religions are beginning to resurface. Sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes have not spoken to each other in some time.

However, when their father—an architect who was both cruel and revered—passes away, their lives are forever changed. His death offers the sisters an opportunity to come together in a new way. In the grand glass house they grew up in, their father’s most famous creation, the sisters sort through the secrets and memories he left behind, until a revelation in his will shatters their fragile bond.

The sisters are more estranged than ever, and their lives spin out of control: Irene’s relationship is straining at the seams, Isla’s ex-wife keeps calling, and cynical Agnes is falling in love for the first time. But something even more sinister might be unfolding, something related to their mother’s long-ago disappearance and the strangers who have always seemed unusually interested in the sisters’ lives. Soon, it becomes clear that the sisters were chosen for a very particular purpose, one with shattering implications for their family and their imperiled world.

Julia Armfield is the author of the novels Private Rites and Our Wives Under the Sea, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the 2022 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Horror and Best Debut Novel, and the story collection salt slow. Her work has appeared in Granta, Lighthouse, Analog Magazine, Neon, and Best British Short Stories 2019 and 2021. She is the winner of the White Review Short Story Prize and a Pushcart Prize, and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Awards in 2019. She lives and works in London.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books I’ve personally vetted for quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

Read: September 2025

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The Singing Word

by Walt Hunter

The Singing Word: 168 Years of Atlantic Poetry, edited by Walt Hunter, celebrates the people, land, and spirit of America. This remarkable collection showcases a wide range of contemporary and historical poetry from the 168-year archive of The Atlantic magazine. Since its first issue in 1857, the poetry published in The Atlantic has drawn attention to the nation’s ongoing journey of self-discovery.

The magazine’s verse has featured odes to American leaders and landscapes, laments for the dead, and calls for change, appealing to the enduring ideals of Atlantic readers.

This one-of-a-kind collection selects poems of rousing optimism, clear-eyed realism, and moving lyricism—poems infused with the language of America’s songs, myths, and history, from the Civil War up through the present in three rich parts: National Anthems, Natural Lines, and Personal Mythologies.

Curated by The Atlantic’s Poetry Editor, this anthology features both world-famous poets—from Longfellow to Limón, including Robert Frost, W. S. Merwin, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich—as well as poets whose work has never before been published outside of the magazine.

Offering readers an essential understanding of American canon and the evolving nation, its poets have yearned to capture—the poetry of The Atlantic is the poetry of America.

Walt Hunter is a professor of twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature and chair of the English department at Case Western Reserve University. He is also the fiction and poetry editor for The Atlantic.

Discover your next favorite book and dive into a world of curated, exciting reads by purchasing through my links. You’ll have access to a diverse selection of books that I’ve personally vetted to ensure quality and enjoyment. Additionally, by supporting these selections, you’ll help me continue to provide you with more personalized recommendations. I earn a small commission from your purchase, which allows me to buy and share even more books with you. Your support truly makes a difference!

Read: April 2023

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Commitment: A Novel

by Mona Simpson

The novel Commitment by Mona Simpson delves into the complexities of family and duty when a parent falls ill. It sheds light on the significant impact of untreated mental health crises and highlights the under-appreciated role of friends in shaping the lives of children left to their own devices.

A hardworking single mother, Diane Aziz falls into a deep depression after dropping off her oldest son, Walter, at college. Despite her struggles, her closest friend is vital in keeping the family together and their mother’s dreams alive.

This is a story of one family’s struggle to navigate the crisis of their lives, a struggle that may resonate with many readers. Walter discovers a newfound passion for architecture, but financial struggles threaten his academic pursuits. Meanwhile, Lina fights to attend an Ivy League school, and Donny, the youngest sibling, battles a dangerous drug addiction.

As someone with different personal experiences, I still found Commitment to affirm the importance of biological and chosen families.

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.

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Read: October 2024

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Dogs and Monsters: Stories

by Mark Haddon

Today, I started reading Dogs and Monsters: Stories by Mark Haddon. The collection features eight captivating and imaginative stories that blend Greek myths with contemporary dystopian narratives. The stories explore themes of mortality, moral choices, and various forms of love, including romantic, familial, and self-love. Haddon’s clear-eyed vision is infused with deep empathy.

In addition, Haddon’s fluid prose showcases his remarkable powers of observation, both of the physical world and the inner workings of the human psyche. Greek myths have fascinated people for millennia with their timeless appeal and enduring lessons about fate, hubris, and life’s uncertainties. In Dogs and Monsters: Stories, Mark Haddon delves into the heart of these ancient fables and presents them in a fresh light. For instance, in one story, the dawn goddess Eos requests that Zeus grant her lover Tithonus eternal life but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In “The Quiet Limit of the World,” Haddon imagines Tithonus’s life as he ages over thousands of years, transforming this cautionary tale about tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on observing death from the outside. This tale ultimately explores how carnal love evolves into something more profound and poignant over time.

In “The Mother‘s Story,” Haddon reinterprets the myth of the Minotaur, born of the monstrous lust of King Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë. He turns it into a heartbreaking parable of a mother’s love for a damaged child and the more tangible monstrosities of patriarchy. In “D.O.G.Z.,” the story of Actaeon, who was transformed into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and was subsequently torn apart by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor for the continuum of human and animal behavior.

Other stories in Dogs and Monsters: Stories play with contemporary mythic tropes—such as genetic engineering, attempts to escape the future, and the cruelty of adolescent ostracism. These stories showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that concerned the Greeks but in a fresh and intriguing light. Haddon‘s tales cover a wide range of themes, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, and explore love alongside stories of cruelty. They take readers from battlefields to bed and breakfasts and from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all bound together by profound sympathy and an insight into how human beings think, feel, and act when pushed to their limits.