Richard W. shared a stream on November 12, 2022
Raindrops on My Head!

Raindrops on My Head!

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 1 second

Climbing the Second Mountain with JanToday’s walk was into two unequal timeframes.

The lingering showers of Tropical Storm Nicole had, I thought, played out overnight.

The tropical rain drenched me like a wet mop less than five minutes from home.

My desire to continue on the route undeterred by Mother Nature became impossible.

Jan always worried if I could adjust to circumstances beyond my control.

What if the weather turned on a dime, and you could not return home to me?

Despite my relentless commitment to walking, I have learned to come in from the rain and cold and wait for better walking conditions.

Today Jan would be proud of me as I did a U-turn and waited for the rain to cease.

Her love is always with me and will guide me on my journey into an unknown land.

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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Jan by the sea

Jan is My Guardian Angel

Light snow started accumulating on the brim of my Peets hat.

The snow was light and fluffy, and I felt no reason not to continue walking alone.

However, as the temperature rose, it turned to freezing rain. Twice my feet slipped in the icy path.

Each time, Jan reassured me that I could finish this walk.

Having a guardian angel walk with me reminds me that our love will never die.

Richard W. Brown February 7, 2022

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Raindrops on My Head!
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Three Strong Women

Read: August 2022

Three Strong Women

by Marie NDiaye

Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye is a novel that focuses on three women who say no. Winner of the coveted Prix Goncourt, the first by a black woman, Marie NDiaye, creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as beautiful. With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. I highly recommend this novel.

John Fletcher translated the Kindle version.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, an impoverished widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the Fanta above) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.

With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. We see with stunning emotional exactitude how ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength, even as their humanity is chipped away. Three Strong Women admits to an immigrant experience rarely, if ever, examined in fiction, but even more into the depths of the suffering heart.

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

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The Garden of Letters

Read: June 2021

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The Garden of Letters

by son Richman

The Garden of Letters by Alyson Richman was one of the first books I read after Jan died. It was the perfect love story to read after the loss of the love of my life. The love Jan and I shared was because we shared a portion of the soul of the other, and thus we were meant for each other from day one. 

The two primary characters – Elodie Bertolotti and Angelo Rosselli – resonated with me as they were also people who shared souls. The book “captures the hope, suspense, and romance of an uncertain era, in an epic intertwining story of first love, great tragedy, and spectacular bravery.“

As I turned every page, the story filled my heart with love and happiness as it reminded me of the love that Jan and I shared.

Portofino, Italy, 1943. A young woman steps off a boat in a scenic coastal village. Although she knows how to disappear in a crowd, Elodie is too terrified to slip by the German officers while carrying her poorly forged identity papers. She is frozen until a man she’s never met before claims to know her. In desperate need of shelter, Elodie follows him back to his home on the cliffs of Portofino.

Only months before, Elodie Bertolotti was a cello prodigy in Verona, unconcerned with world events. But when Mussolini’s Fascist regime strikes her family, Elodie is drawn into the burgeoning resistance movement by Luca, a young and passionate bookseller. As the occupation looms, she discovers that her unique musical talents, and her courage, have the power to save lives.

In Portofino, young doctor Angelo Rosselli gives the frightened and exhausted girl sanctuary. He is a man with painful secrets of his own, haunted by guilt and remorse. But Elodie’s arrival has the power to awaken a sense of hope that Angelo thought was lost to him forever.

I not only recommend this book, but I am also looking forward to reading more of her novels.

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Send for Me

Read: January 2022

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Send for Me

by Lauren Fox

Send for Me by Lauren Fox. Send for Me is an achingly beautiful work of historical fiction that moves between Germany on the eve of World War II and present-day Wisconsin, unspooling a thread of love, longing, and the constant push and pull of family. Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents’ famous bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can’t quite believe that it will affect them; they’re hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer: a brick was thrown through her window; a childhood friend who cuts ties with her; customers refuse to patronize the bakery.

This novel explores mothers and daughters, duty and obligation, hope and forgiveness of four generations of mothers and daughters – Klara, Annelise, Ruth, and Clare.

Klara is the matriarch who remains in Germany, where she dies at the beginning of the war. Annelise is her daughter who becomes a refugee in Milwaukee. The poignant letters from her mother ask for help to leave Germany and reunite with her daughter and granddaughter Ruthie, tying together the four generations.

The letters are found by Clara, who pays to have them translated. Can we ever escape from the past, and how does it shape our futures.

I enjoyed reading this book as I prefer historical fiction, especially about the rise of Germany and antisemitism.

Send for Me is also a reminder that we are refugees.

Our lives are forever intertwined between two cultures, the past and the future.

I highly recommend Send for Me.

 

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Heartwood

Read: April 2025

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Heartwood: A Novel

by Amity Gaige

Today, I embarked on the journey of Heartwood by Amity Gaige. This novel unfolds a gripping narrative as a search and rescue team races against time to find an experienced hiker who mysteriously disappears on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. The suspense of the search for Valerie is palpable, drawing you into the story with great literary ambition and love at its core.

In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie’s emotional struggle is palpable as she pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother, battling the elements and struggling to keep hoping.

At the heart of the investigation is Beverly, the determined Maine State Game Warden tasked with finding Valerie, who leads the search on the ground. Meanwhile, Lena, a seventy-six-year-old birdwatcher in a Connecticut retirement community, becomes an unexpected armchair detective. What’s unique about this narrative is that a puzzle emerges between these compelling narratives, intensifying the frantic search, as Valerie’s disappearance may not be accidental.

Heartwood is a “gem of a thousand facets—suspenseful, transporting, tender, and ultimately soul-mending” (Megan Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning). It tells the story of a lost hiker’s odyssey and is a moving rendering of each character’s interior journey. The mystery inspires more significant questions about how we get lost and how we are found.

Amity Gaige is the author of four previous novels: O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, Sea Wife, a 2020 New York Times Notable Book, and a Mark Twain American Voice Award finalist. Schroder was also a New York Times Notable Book and the best book of 2013 according to The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and was shortlisted for the UK’s Folio Prize in 2014. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages. In 2018, Amity was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction. She lives with her family in West Hartford, Connecticut, and teaches creative writing at Yale.

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!

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Reluctantly Home

Read: June 2022

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Reluctantly Home

by Imogen Clark

Reluctantly Home by Imogen Clark is about dealing with the past—and finally facing the future-a topic that was appealing to me. Thirteen months into my grief journey, I live between a perfect past and an unknowable future. Will Reluctantly Home by Imogen Clark help me manage these two worlds?

Surprisingly it did. Unlike the two protagonists, I am mourning losing Jan, the love of my life. However, the neuromapping in my brain made it impossible to understand how to continue to love Jan and separate that from the time and space connections that made me believe she would return at any moment.

Reluctantly Home by Imogen Clark helped me understand that grief should and cannot define us forever. I recommend this book to all readers, not only those on a grief journey like mine.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Pip Appleby seems to have it all, with her prestigious job as a human rights lawyer and her enviable London home. But then a tragic accident stops her life in its tracks, and everything changes instantly. Retreating to her family’s rural farm and the humble origins she has been trying to hide, Pip is haunted by what she has done.

When she discovers the diary of actress Evelyn Mountcastle in a box of old books, Pip revels in the opportunity to lose herself in someone else’s life rather than focus on the disaster that is her own. But soon, she sees parallels—Evelyn’s life was also beset by tragedy, and, like Pip, she returned to Southwold under a dark cloud.

When Pip and Evelyn’s paths cross in real life, they slowly begin to reveal the hidden stories holding them back. Can they help each other forgive what happened in the past and, perhaps, find happiness in the future?

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King of Ashes

Read: July 2025

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King of Ashes: A Novel

by S. A. Cosby

Today, as heavy thunderstorms rumbled outside and flash flood warnings loomed, I dove into “King of Ashes,” a gripping Southern crime saga that draws inspiration from “The Godfather.” Written by the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby, this novel was a long-awaited treat for me. I read “All the Sinners Bleed” nearly two years ago and have been itching for Cosby’s next masterpiece ever since.

As I turned the pages, the opening paragraphs immediately pulled me in and confirmed that the wait was worthwhile. The summoning of eldest son Roman Carruthers’ home after his father’s car accident not only sets the stage for a gripping plot but also resonates with the universal theme of family. He finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident, and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.

Roman, a financial whiz with a knack for numbers and a talent for making his clients wealthy, has some money to help his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself and his own particular set of financial skills.

Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared under mysterious or suspicious circumstances when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.

Because everything burns.

S. A. Cosby is a New York Times bestselling writer from southeastern Virginia. He is the author of All the Sinners Bleed, which was on more than forty Best of the Year lists, including Barack Obama’s, as well as Edgar Award finalist Razorblade Tears and Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Blacktop Wasteland. He has also won the Anthony Award, ITW Thriller Award, Barry Award, Macavity Award, BCALA Award, and Audie Award. He has been longlisted for the ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence.

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!

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