Today, I began reading Julia Alvarez‘s novel “The Cemetery of Untold Stories.” The book explores whose stories deserve to be told and whose should remain buried. In the end, Alma, the main character, finds meaning in the power of storytelling. Julia Alvarez reminds us that our stories are never truly finished, even at the end.

Alma Cruz, a famous writer, doesn’t want to suffer the same fate as her friend, who became mentally unstable after struggling to finish a book. So, when Alma inherits a small plot of land in her native Dominican Republic, she turns it into a cemetery for her unfinished stories. She hopes her characters will finally be able to rest in peace.

However, they have other ideas and soon begin to rewrite and revise themselves, even talking and interacting with one another. Fortunately, Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a listener to Alma’s characters’ secret tales. These tales include those of Bienvenida, the abandoned wife of dictator Rafael Trujillo, who was erased from official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle is a good, quick read. It is an “unforgettable love story that reminds us of the power of loyalty, friendship, and the unpredictable nature of destiny.”

The protagonist Dannie Kohan is a Type A lawyer who has her life planned out by the numbers. Everything she believes will happen according to her plan. But life sometimes throws us a curveball.

She applies for the job she has always wanted, and her boyfriend proposes to her. Everything is going according to her plan. She returns home believing that life is going as planned and falls asleep.

But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. The television news is on in the background, and she can just make out the scrolling date. It’s the same night—December 15—but 2025, five years in the future.

There are twists and turns, including her best friend introducing her new boyfriend, who happens to be the man she was with briefly in 2025. Her friends’ struggle with and eventual death from Ovarian cancer forces Dannie to confront life as is. Her friend reminds her that she has never truly experienced love and needs to stop controlling her life and those around her.

In five years is a question I am asking myself. Where will I be five years after Jan’s death?

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The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau is a book that I read a portion of for a college class, but for reasons that I cannot now remember never got around to reading it from cover to cover. In the early stages of grief, I found a copy in our bookshelf and said, let me read it now. It was a decision that I did not regret.

Having grown up in the American South, the book resonated with me, as did the sections I read fifty years ago. It’s a many-layered indictment of racism and rage that is as terrifying as it is wise.

As someone who likes history and values the importance of place, the book’s focus on the continued ownership of the same land since the early 1800s by the Howland’s provided a broad historical perspective. Abigail Howland has learned many important family legacies, but not all.

However, when William’s, her grandfather, relationship with Margaret Carmichael, a black housekeeper, is revealed to the community, the racism and fury boil over. Abigail chooses to get even with the town her family built by punishing them.

The Keepers of the House is a book that I wish I had read in its entirety half a century ago. Having read it now, I recommend it to all who care about life and community.

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Having surpassed my Goodreads 2022 reading goal, I wanted a lite, historical fiction book and found this one in the e-library. Lucky Us by Amy Bloom is a book that hooked me on the opening line – “My father’s wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us.” I enjoyed reading it and highly recommend it.

The first section in Hollywood was the one I found less appealing. Partly that is because I identified with Eva, and she does not fulfill her leading role until the last two sections. Its depiction of how people survived the way years by sometimes is a reminder of our inner resilience.

Goodreads provides the following summary.

So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed Away was called “a literary triumph” (The New York Times). Lucky Us is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck.

Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris’s ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island.

With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, Lucky Us is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn’s beauty parlors to London’s West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species.

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Today, I started reading “Clear: A Novel” by Carys Davies. It’s a stunning and exquisite novel written by an award-winning author. The story follows John, a Scottish minister who is sent to a remote island off the coast of Scotland to evict the last remaining inhabitant, Ivar. However, Ivar is unwilling to leave, and John’s wife, Mary, has severe misgivings about the task.

Shortly after arriving on the island, John falls off a cliff and is badly injured. Ivar finds him and takes him home, where he tends to his wounds. John and Ivar understand each other despite the language barrier and the fragile connection that forms.

The story takes place in the 1840s, during the Scottish Clearances, a period of forced evictions that saw many rural communities lose their homes. The novel explores the differences and connections between people, the impact of history on our beliefs, and the resilience of the human spirit.

“Clear” is a moving, unpredictable, sensitive, and spellbinding novel. It is a profound and pleasurable read that will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse.  Black Sun is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.

I have always enjoyed fantasy novels like Black Sun, and this is the first one set in the Pre-Columbian Americas.

A god will return
When the earth and sky converge
Under the black sun

In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.

Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio, is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

Will Serapio be harmless or a villain? The answer, my friend, will be known when you read this book or perhaps the second one in the trilogy.

Before meeting and falling forever in love with Jan, I had dreamed of the life of an American Studies professor. Thousands of students are relieved to know I did not pursue that life. If I had opened that door, an area of focus would have been on Pre-Columbian Americas.

I recommend this book and will read the next two in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy.

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