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.
Read: March 2023
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.
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by Alexander Chee
Today I read The Weddings by Alexander Chee. It is the fifth and last book in Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. For Jack Cho, a fortysomething gay man, being able to marry someone he loves is so unfamiliar it’s terrifying. Then a wedding invitation from a college friend brings about a collision with those fears—and his secret history.
I have always enjoyed weddings. I attended the last one when my younger son married in July 2021. Not sure if I will ever participate in another wedding.
I have attended many diverse weddings but never one with as many secret histories. To avoid revealing the secrets, I will state that The Weddings is well written, each moment is precise, and the mysteries are neither shocking nor disruptive to the story.
I highly recommend The Weddings.
Each Inheritance piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. The Weddings is the fifth one in the series I have read.
The previous four were:
I have enjoyed all five books.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Jack and his new boyfriend, Caleb, are attending the wedding of Jack’s estranged straight friend Scott. No sooner do the guests start to mingle than questions arise about relationships, tradition, Jack’s feelings for the groom, and what’s at stake as he navigates daunting territory, both new and old. In this wry and surprising short story, award-winning author Alexander Chee extends an invitation to the party—and awakening—of a lifetime.
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.
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.
by Elena Gorokhova
A Train to Moscow by Elena Gorokhova is set in post–World War II Russia; a girl, must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion, loss, perseverance, and ambition. In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her dream of becoming an actress.
When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.
Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Kolya’s revelations and tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage.
After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are genuinely worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.
This was a page-turner, as I held my breath to find out the next steps that Sasha would take. Her ambition combined with the secrets she learns keeps the reader focused on the next page.
I recommend this book.
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by Kate Riley
“Ruth” by Kate Riley is a captivating and thought-provoking exploration of a woman’s journey through the complexities of life within a tightly-knit and devout community. The narrative intricately weaves together the nuances of faith, tradition, and individual desire, encouraging readers to confront their own deeply held beliefs about the nature of fulfillment and purpose.
Ruth was raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning, she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth, they remain puzzles.
Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Is this happiness?
Kate Riley was raised in New York City, and this book is her final work.
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by Katie Yee
In the style of Jenny Offill and inspired by Nora Ephron‘s humorous and poignant writing on heartbreak and womanhood, “Maggie, or A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar” by Katie Yee is a masterclass in transforming personal tragedy into bold comedy. This debut novel has been recognized as a New York Times Notable Book and in Time’s list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2025, along with features in many other publications.
A man and a woman walk into a restaurant. The woman expects a lovely night filled with endless plates of samosas. Instead, she finds out her husband is having an affair with a woman named Maggie.
A short while after, her chest starts to ache. She walks into an examination room, where she finds out the pain in her breast isn’t just heartbreak—it’s cancer. She decides to call the tumor Maggie.
Unfolding in fragments over the following months, Maggie, or a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar follows the narrator as she embarks on a journey of grief, healing, and reclamation. She starts talking to Maggie (the tumor), getting acquainted with her body’s new inhabitant. She overgenerously creates a “Guide to My Husband: A User’s Manual” for Maggie (the other woman), hoping to ease the process of discovering her ex-husband’s whims and quirks. She turns her children’s bedtime stories into retellings of Chinese folklore passed down by her mother, in an attempt to help them fall in love with their shared culture—and perhaps save herself in the process.
Katie Yee is a writer based in Brooklyn. She has received fellowships from the Center for Fiction, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and Kundiman. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, No Tokens, The Believer, Washington Square Review, Triangle House, Epiphany, and Literary Hub. During the day, she works at the Brooklyn Museum, and at night, she writes—often under the watchful eye of her judgmental rescue dog, Ollie.
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by Sara Goodman Confino
After writing Road Trippin, I needed to read about other homeward-bound journeys that help us find peace and a future after a tragedy. Today I started reading She’s Up to No Good by Sara Goodman Confino. The book is a funny, poignant, and life-affirming novel about family, secrets, and broken hearts. It may be the best read for my days in San Diego.
It was the perfect read for my time at Camp, as it was a life-affirming novel. As much as I know that life continues, She’s Up to No Good reaffirmed my belief.
I highly recommend this book.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview.
Four years into her marriage, Jenna is blindsided when her husband asks for a divorce. With time on her hands and her life in flux, she agrees to accompany her eccentric grandmother, Evelyn, on a road trip to the seaside Massachusetts town where much of their family history was shaped.
When they hit the road, Evelyn spins the tale of the star-crossed teenage romance that captured her heart more than seventy years ago and changed the course of her life. She insists the return to her hometown isn’t about that at all—no matter how much she talks about Tony, her unforgettable and forbidden first love.
Upon arrival, Jenna meets Tony’s attentive great-nephew Joe. The new friendship and fresh ocean air give her the confidence and distance she needs to begin putting the pain of a broken marriage behind her.
As the secrets and truths of Evelyn’s past unfold, Jenna discovers a new side of her grandmother and of herself that she never knew existed—and learns that the possibilities for healing can come at the most unexpected times in a woman’s life.
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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.
by Margaret Atwood
Old Babes in the Wood: Stories by Margaret Atwood is a collection of remarkable tales, which delight, illuminate, and are quietly devastating. I especially found the stories about Nell and Tig compelling and engaging. Widow describes a letter Nell almost wrote to a friend after Tig is gone. Nell sounded like me when she said, “the warping or folding of time. In some parts of this refolded time, Tig still exists, as much as he ever did.”
The letter Nell is writing to a friend she will never be sent because it speaks to the harsh reality that grief imposes upon us.
Margaret Atwood writes as Nell,
Have I gone into the dark tunnel, dressed in mourning black with gloves and a veil, and come out the other end, all cheery and wearing bright colors and loaded for bear?
No. Because it’s not a tunnel. There isn’t any other end. Time has ceased to be linear, with life events and memories in a chronological row, like beads on a string. It’s the strangest feeling, or experience, or rearrangement. I’m not sure I can explain it to you.
As much as it might have appeared that I was in a dark tunnel after Jan died, I was not and am not now. There is indeed no defined end to the grief journey.
We all must learn how to live without our loved ones. The pathway I have chosen may not work for anyone else.
The earlier Nell and Tig stories are memories about their lives, reminding me of how I wrote about how Jan and I met and eventually married.
I have always enjoyed reading Atwood‘s writing, including The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments. I highly recommend Old Babes in the Wood: Stories by Margaret Atwood!
Old Babes in the Wood was my twenty-third book of the year and fulfilled my Goodreads 2023 Reading Challenge, but it will not end my reading this year.
The Goodreads summary provides an overview,
Margaret Atwood has established herself as one of the world’s most visionary and canonical authors. This collection of fifteen extraordinary stories–some of which have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine–explores the full warp and weft of experience, speaking to our unique times with Atwood’s characteristic insight, wit, and intellect.
The two brave sisters of the title story grapple with loss and memory on a perfect summer evening; “Impatient Griselda” explores alienation and miscommunication with a fresh twist on a folkloric classic; and “My Evil Mother” touches on the unbelievable, examining a mother-daughter relationship in which the mother purports to be a witch. At the heart of the collection are seven extraordinary stories that follow a married couple across the decades, the moments big and small that make up a long life of uncommon love–and what comes after.
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.
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.
