The Titanic Survivors Book Club by Timothy Schaffert

The Titanic Survivors Book Club by Timothy Schaffert

320 pages

Published April 2024 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

For weeks after the sinking of the Titanic, Yorick spots his own name among the list of those lost at sea. As an apprentice librarian for the White Star Line, his job was to curate the ship’s second-class library. But the day the Titanic set sail he was left stranded at the dock.

After the ship’s sinking, Yorick takes this twist of fate as a sign to follow his lifelong dream of owning a bookshop in Paris. Soon after, he receives an invitation to a secret society of survivors where he encounters other ticket holders who didn’t board the ship. Haunted by their good fortune, they decide to form a book society, where they can grapple with their own anxieties through heated discussions of The Awakening or The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Of this ragtag group, Yorick finds himself particularly drawn to the glamorous Zinnia and the mysterious Haze, and a tangled triangle of love and friendship forms among them. Yet with the Great War on the horizon and the unexpected death of one of their own, the surviving book club members are left wondering what fate might have in store.

Elegant and elegiac, The Titanic Survivors Book Club is a dazzling ode to love, chance, and the transformative power of books to bring people together.

My Thoughts: 

I've been a fan of Schaffert's since 2010, when I first met him at Omaha Lit Fest, an event he organized and which I very much enjoyed attending for several years. The Titanic Survivors Book Club is the sixth of his books that I've read and very much enjoyed. I still count his The Coffins of Little Hope as one of my favorites, but his writing has expanded far beyond the Nebraska borders of that book. 

What I Liked About This Book:

• When you read the title of the book, you are definitely expecting a book about a group of people that managed to get into lifeboats as the Titanic sank into icy waters. These are not those survivors, which is makes them so interesting and so bound to one another. 
• The core of this book is the trio of Yorick, Zinnia and Haze and their trio of love stories. Such interesting and unusual characters. I loved how they both made each other better and broke each other apart. 
• Paris...the book store...the clothing and food and drinks. Schaffert is a master at creating atmosphere and painting a picture. I would love to see this book made into a movie so I could see all of this come to life...assuming Hollywood could do the writing, and the image I've created in my head, justice. 
• There is an epistolary section of the book which was an interesting interlude and allowed readers to see the story from many angles. 
• There is always a darkness to Schaffert's writing that draws me in; this one may be the darkest. But they also always contain an amount of humor (which, if you've ever seen Schaffert speak, will not surprise you). 
• I've remarked on this before and I will again with this book - there are no "happily ever afters" in Schaffert's books and that's just as it should be.

What Didn't Work As Well For Me: 

• I would have liked to see more the meetings of the book club. So many interesting characters to learn more about. 
• Of course, a book set just after the sinking of the Titanic was going to reach the point where the First World War began and these characters were pulled into it. That was logical, but I felt a little bit like it pulled me away from story that I'd been enjoying and the aftermath of what happened in the war was a slow collapse before things came back together. 

All in all, a very satisfying book that gave me exactly what I was expecting from Schaffert. I miss his books set in Nebraska but I'm also thrilled to watch him explore the wider world and its history. 

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell

400 pages

Published July 2024 by HarperCollins

Publisher's Summary: 

They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.

My Thoughts: 

This week I'll be reviewing this book by Omaha author Rainbow Rowell and Omaha author Timothy Schaffert. As I looked back to see which was the first Rowell book that I'd read, I found that in April 2011, I also reviewed books by these same authors. That Rowell book was my first book by her, 2011's Attachments. In that book I found that her writing light and humorous, but also heartwarming and heartbreaking. I was so excited that she agreed to write a guest post for my then two-year-old blog. 

Since then I've read 2014's Landline, 2013's Fangirl and, one of my all-time favorite books, 2012's Eleanor and Park. Since then, though, Rowell has written three books that were a spinoff of Fangirl that were not something that interested me and some manga, also outside of my reading comfort zone. I've missed her. I can't tell you how excited I was to find that she'd finally written something that harkened back to those books I so enjoyed a decade ago. And then worried that Rowell's style might have changed over the years, that this book couldn't live up to my memories of the other books. 

What did I expect from this book (which, of course, I knew nothing about going in because I didn't look, I just automatically knew I'd want to read it)? Humor. A relationship between two characters who keep putting roadblocks into their paths to happiness. Complicated family relationships. At least one quirky character, most likely one that makes me think that they are modeled in no small part on Rowell herself. Great dialogue. Omaha. And I got all of that, every bit of it. 

This is what Kirkus Reviews had to say about this book: "Both of them are smart, clever, misanthropic, and stubborn. They are also, along with the omniscient narrative voice and tertiary characters, very funny. Rowell does longing like nobody’s business. She pits epic love against relatable, painful foibles. Cary and Shiloh want each other palpably, but they get hung up on little details, feel shame, project, overthink. They struggle mightily to believe they’re lovable."

In this book, Rowell blends her understanding of adult life and relationships (as she did so well in Landline) with her astonishing ability to recall the angst and pain and struggles of young people. In this book, readers are treated to both the current storyline of Shiloh and Cary as they try to reconnect and pick up where they left off and to glimpses into their pasts, into their friendship that would long ago have become something more than that had they had the ability and courage to express what they truly felt. In the end, it's probably just as well that they didn't. It wouldn't have lasted. They had to work their way to each other as adults. I'd worry that I've given away something here; but you know this book for what it is, a romance where you'll get the ending you're hoping for. Even if you can't imagine, for a goodly part of the book, how these two will ever be truly honest with each other, get over their fears, and find a way to make things work out, no matter how many obstacles are in their path. 

Welcome back to adult fiction, Rainbow Rowell! I've missed you! 

The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert

The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert

Published

Source: courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:

Clementine is a seventy-two year-old reformed con artist with a penchant for impeccably tailored suits. Her life of crime has led her from the uber-wealthy perfume junkies of belle epoque Manhattan, to the scented butterflies of Costa Rica, to the spice markets of Marrakech, and finally the bordellos of Paris, where she settles down in 1930 and opens a shop bottling her favorite extracts for the ladies of the cabarets.

Now it's 1941 and Clem's favorite haunt, Madame Boulette's, is crawling with Nazis, while Clem's people—the outsiders, the artists, and the hustlers who used to call it home—are disappearing. Clem's first instinct is to go to ground—it's a frigid Paris winter and she's too old to put up a fight. But when the cabaret's prize songbird, Zoe St. Angel, recruits Clem to steal the recipe book of a now-missing famous Parisian perfumer, she can't say no. Her mark is Oskar Voss, a Francophile Nazi bureaucrat, who wants the book and Clem's expertise to himself. Hoping to buy the time and trust she needs to pull off her scheme, Clem settles on a novel strategy: Telling Voss the truth about the life and loves she came to Paris to escape.

Complete with romance, espionage, champagne towers, and haute couture, this full-tilt sensory experience is a dazzling portrait of the underground resistance of twentieth-century Paris and a passionate love letter to the power of beauty and community in the face of insidious hate.

My Thoughts:

I've read all but one of Schaffert's books (and it's sitting on my bookshelf) so it will probably come as no surprise to anyone who's read my reviews of his books (The Swan Gondola, The Coffins of Little Hope, Devils In The Sugar Shop, The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters) that this is one of my favorite books of the year. Clearly I'm biased. But I'm not alone in my praise. 

• "Other authors have had clever takes on World War II spy novels, but none has created a voice like Clem’s..." - Los Angeles Times
• "The Perfume Thief is a pulse-pounding thriller and a sensuous experience you’ll want to savor." - Oprah Daily
• "Schaffert concocts a memorable work that oozes atmosphere and originality. . . It boasts beguiling characters who gain depth with each unveiled layer." - Book List

Kirkus Reviews is not so nice. They complain that the bad guys are not menacing enough and that the terrors are mostly offstage. To the first point, I disagree. There is a constant low hum of unease in this book because we understand what these men are capable of doing. To the second point, yes, terrors are mostly offstage; for that I was grateful. We've all read enough books about World War II and the Nazis to know that they did terrible, unspeakable things to people. We understand that trust is a hard thing to come by in an occupied city, where some people will do whatever they have to do to save themselves and others may well agree with the occupiers. There are an abundance of characters here Schaffert doesn't need to make that the focus of his book. 

Voss and Clem are playing a cat-and-mouse game and we're never quite sure who is the cat and who is the mouse. Schaffert could have crafted a book wherein his hero never made a misstep, where her plan worked perfectly and they were always one step ahead of the Nazis. But that's not this book. While Clem understands exactly what might happen to her and the people she cares about, she still believes that she is clever enough to outsmart Voss...until she isn't. I never once felt entirely comfortable. Kirkus Reviews is wrong - I spent this entire book worried that Voss was on to Clem, that Lutz would kill Zoe, that Day would push her luck just a bit too far. 

What Kirkus Review should have focused on was Schaffert's amazing (as always) characters. Clem is a character unlike any you've read before, with a story you've never heard before. Day, Blue, and even Voss have stories that could stand on their own. Or, instead of writing off the beauty of Schaffert's writing, they could have focused on his amazing descriptions and his beautiful writing.

"And the fields of war are full of ghosts who wish they could go back to that one split second that separates them from life and death. There've been so many lives undone by a misstep, a wrong turn, a hair trigger."

"Paris, our village, has fallen victim to a fairy-tale curse. The sun rises; the moon drops. The cogs of the clockworks tick-tock north-south, or east-west, in whatever direction they've always turned but time itself has turned to fog. The days: they don't seem short. They don't seem long. What day even is it?"

And, despite what Kirkus says, Schaffert does make us see what life in occupied Paris was like.

"The other night, we got our hands on a roasted chicken that was more likely some songbird, a back-alley jackdaw dropped by a slingshots. nWe cut into his plump breast and found it mostly empty, like he's died with his lung puffed up with a half-whistled melody. We ate the little bird like tender wolves, stripping it down to its skeleton, going so far as to break off bones to suck. Food is scarce in Paris, but the Nazis eat fine."

I recently said that a book was 100 pages too long, in no small part because it was overflowing with descriptions. But here Schaffert awakens every sense here and it never seemed to much. 

"My building has become a factory, a distillery, cellar to attic, a gasworks of copper pipes corkscrewing through the parlor's ceiling and up through the kitchen floor, winding around the bedposts, whistling like snakes with a lisp. The building's strange acoustics, and all the perfumery's pipes and vents, warp and bend our voices. Sometimes you can whisper in someone's ear from another room." 

"I suggest the ballet dancer (the scent o talc, sweat, leather, the sharp sour-sweet of roses turning to mold), and she says no. I suggest the journalist (typewriter ribbon, a struck match, the tart ash in the bowl of a hasish pipe) and she says no to that too."

"The tapestries and wallpapers, the sofas and chairs, are all in powder blues and rose pinks and sea greens, like dusty meringues in a pastry-shop window. Zoe grew up among antiques, probably tiptoeing across the Aubusson carpets women with portraits of unicorns in the fields of thistle. She sat in the walled-in rose garden behind the house hosting tea parties of her own, with dolls with human-hair pompadours and sait ball gowns, with felt mice in bow ties infesting her paper macarons and glass candy. Such a life."

 This is a book to delight the senses. It is also a book of truths and lies, love and hate, deceit, romance, secrets, forbidden love, and friendships. I loved it. It's the book I've been waiting months for. 

Life: It Goes On - August 8

Happy Sunday from sodden Omaha! We had very, very heavy rain last night and parts of Omaha flooded that I have never seen flood in the almost 36 years we've lived here. Water was rushing downhill so fast that it was pushing parked cars up against each other. Can't imagine coming out from a dinner out only to find that you couldn't get into your car because it was pressed up against another car! Glad that we did our carryout/picnic dinner earlier and that we had kept an eye on the forecast and not decided to spend the evening in downtown Omaha...or run to the grocery store about a mile from us! Definitely not our usual very dry August. 

Last Week I: 

 Listened To: The Maidens, by Alex Michaelides, after I finished J. D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. I'm really enjoying the readers of The Maidens. 

Watched: Pretty much only the Olympics. I stayed up until after 1 a.m. last night to watch the women's volleyball gold medal match. Three former Huskers play on the team, including Jordan Larson (who is from a small town in Nebraska), who was named MVP, and Justine Wong-Orantes, who was named best libero of the tournament. 

Read: Timothy Schaffert's latest, The Perfume Thief, which is now my favorite of his books. Or maybe tied for favorite because I still think about Coffins of Little Hope (it's one of the books that lives on my might-read-it-again-someday bookshelf - which holds very few books). 

Made: Pretty much everything we ate last week had tomatoes in it - it's that time of year! BLT salad, tomato and basil pasta, BLTs. If we couldn't work the tomatoes into the main course, I sliced them and ate them with a little salt. 

Enjoyed: Dinner with two of The Big Guy's siblings and their spouses Friday evening. It's the first time the six of us have been able to be together since before CoVid and it was so nice!

The Old Market district in 
downtown Omaha Saturday night

This Week I’m:  

Planning: Last week I started working on my office "inch by inch." Turns out that project is going to take a whole lot of smaller projects. I spent the better part of the week working with the proofs from our wedding photographer; for 38 years I haven't been sure what to do with them. Suddenly this week I figured it out. But, as with all of the projects I start, it took more work than I expected. I finally finished it this morning. The proofs included pics of almost everyone who came to the wedding going through the receiving line so it was fun to remember all of those people. This week I'm planning on a new inch-by-inch project in the office - it will also have to do with organizing pictures. 

Thinking About: A nap. I've been battling headaches all week and they are exhausting me. I need those hot, dry August days we usually have!

Feeling: Unproductive (see above), which is frustrating when there are so many things I'd like to be doing. 

Looking forward to: A quieter work week. My boss is on vacation this week so no visits to my desk with questions or "deliverables" she needs from me. Love my job and really like my boss but it's been crazy and I'm hoping this week is quieter. 

Question of the week: I'm told viewership for the Olympics is way down because young people don't have cable tv. Have you been watching? If so, what's been your favorite moment?

Three Bodies Burning by Brian Bogdanoff

Three Bodies Burning: The Anatomy of an Investigation into Murder, Money, and Mexican Marijuana by Brian Bogdanoff

Published 2011 by Press, LLC at Smashwords

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

A haunting triple murder... the inside story of the investigation.When two worlds collide-the illegal transportation of tons of Mexican cartel marijuana to inner city gang members in a Midwestern city's "hood"-three bodies end up burning, caught in a web of greed as a major international drug deal goes very bad.The chilling trail of evidence from a remote wooded area where three bodies are set on fire leads homicide detectives across the country chasing down witnesses and conspirators in a two-year search for cold-blooded killers. This case has it all: murder, piles of cash stashed in the most unlikely of places, a blood-soaked crime scene, the remote dump site for bodies, luxury cars, flashy jewelry, and hundreds of pounds of illegal dope.An unbelievable break takes detectives down the rabbit hole where CSI meets Law & Order and where good old gumshoeing and meticulous forensic procedures bring down a mega-million-dollar drug conspiracy and lock up the bad guys for life.Follow the case through the eyes of the gritty homicide/narcotics detective. A handbook for the amateur criminologist, this book is for true crime fans, prosecutors and defense attorneys, and cops and robbers.Warning: This book contains graphic crime scene photos and adult language.

My Thoughts: 

In my previous job, we were required to have a certain number of hours of fraud training annually. To that end, we attending several lunches hosted by a fraud group every couple of months. Finding people who wanted to speak became difficult and the tie to fraud was often tenuous. For example, the lunch where the county attorney spoke, along with former police officer, who were, to the best of my recollection, talking to us about fraud caused by drug dealing. Completely irrelevant to my line of work but one of the most interesting lunches we ever attended as the former officer was Brian Bogdanoff who spoke about his work in the narcotics division and in solving the crime to which the book title refers. I had every intention of picking up a copy of the book shortly there after and thought of it again when my daughter began studying criminal justice. Eight years later I finally got around to reading it. My thoughts about this book would certainly have been different had I read it years ago. 

I can remember watching the morning news fifteen years ago and learning that three bodies had been found burning just on the edge of Omaha. It's frightening to think that you live in a city where that kind of thing happens. And then, as happens when something ceases to be a news story, I forgot about it. A year later, I recall the trial, in no small part because of the fact that my husband was serving jury duty at that time and, fortunately, was excused from this case. Five years after that, I had forgotten about it again until Bogdanoff talked about it at our lunch and I was fascinated about how the police managed to identify three bodies without identification on them and then track down their murderers. 

I'm still fascinated by that and by the amount of luck, tedious work, and detail it takes to solve crimes like this one. And how much the police rely on the criminals to screw up. Two pieces of paper were left in the pockets of the three men who were killed; had those not been overlooked when the killers emptied the victims' pockets, this case might never have been solved. Finding out who the victims were was key to solving the case - that led officers to their families who confirmed that the men were in Omaha on drug business and gave them the street names of the men the victims had been working with. Still, those were not names the police were familiar with and it would be some months before their identities were discovered. The amount of paperwork and the number of people involved in solving this case are staggering. The detail involved in putting together a case that won't be able to be overturned later due to some technicality is unbelievable. I 100% believe that the men who committed these crimes were terrible people who deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison and I'm glad that Bogdanoff and the people he worked with were able to find them and get them off the streets of Omaha. 

That being said, in light of things I've learned in the past few years and of my new way of thinking about the way police departments work, I did have some problems with the book. For example, in the first chapter, Bogdanoff says, "...very few times do the good guys, the cops, catch a break or get lucky." It wasn't the only time he referred to the police as "the good guys," setting up "us versus them" mentality that I'm growing to believe is one of the problems with how our criminal justice system works. 

That's reinforced when he defends a practice the policy use known as a "bar check" which caused some problems for him once. He, of course, says he and the other officers involved did nothing wrong and that the leaders of the African-American community who "claimed they were threatened, harassed, and intimidated by officers coming into a celebration they were having" might have been doing so as a media ploy. I can't say for certain, but knowing what I know now, I'm guessing that these "bar checks" were more often done in neighborhoods were persons of color live. Bogdanoff says that they went into that particular bar because there was a "large volume of foot and vehicle traffic in the parking lot of a bar that was directly next to one of the housing projects." It clearly never occurred to him then, or in retrospect, that it might have been anything other than suspicious. Bogdanoff grew up in this town, he'd worked extensively in that neighbor, and I can't help but think that he surely must have recognized some of the people going into that bar. But he says "I...learned that I would face people...who have certain agendas, and to support those agendas, they will manipulate situations and facts." I'm sure he's not wrong, that he did encounter people who did that. Again, though, it doesn't seem to occur to him that he may have done the same thing. 

I wish Bogdanoff had had a better editor - I didn't need to know that the prosecutor from the county attorney's office looked like Diane Lane or that once he could "literally hear [another office] crap his pants." And perhaps a little less of the braggadocio. It's a book that could have been tightened up and more focused. Because there is a hell of a story here and an impressive job of bringing two murders to justice. 

The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert

The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert
Published February 2014 by Penguin Publishing Group
Source: my copy purchased the the Omaha Lit Fest and signed by the author

Publisher’s Summary: On the eve of the World’s Fair, Ferret Skerritt, ventriloquist by trade, con man by birth, is unsure how the fair’s events will change him or his city. Omaha still has the marks of a filthy Wild West town, even as it attempts to achieve the grandeur and respectability of nearby Chicago. But when he crosses paths with the beautiful and enigmatic Cecily, his purpose shifts, and the fair becomes the backdrop to their love affair.

One of a traveling troupe of actors that has descended on the city, Cecily works in the Midway’s Chamber of Horrors, where she loses her head hourly on a guillotine, playing Marie Antoinette. And after closing, she rushes off, clinging protectively to a mysterious carpetbag, never giving Ferret a second glance. But a moonlit ride on the swan gondola, a boat on the lagoon of the New White City, transforms everything when the fair’s magic begins to take its effect.

My Thoughts: I have long been a fan of Schaffert’s and grabbed this one up shortly after it was released when I was at an event where I could have it signed. And then it sat. Because I’m Facebook friends with him and I was sort of holding off on it until I knew he had another book headed to the publisher. Seems he’s still working away but I couldn’t wait any longer; it felt like this was just the book I needed.

I was right. The Swan Gondola absolutely enchanted me. Truly, I was under Schaffert’s spell from the beginning, when I was introduced to the Old Sisters Egan, two sisters who live on the plains of Nebraska and whose quiet existence is suddenly upended when a hot air balloon crashes into their house and Ferret Skerritt is deposited, broken bones and broken spirit, in their field. From there Schaffert weaves his story back and forth in time, including letters from Ferret and Cecily.

Of course, I’m particularly partial to the story because it’s set in Nebraska, most of it in Omaha. I was also eager to learn more about the World’s Fair that was celebrated in Omaha in 1898 and 1899. Nothing, no landmark of any kind remains of it today which makes it all the more fascinating and mythical – it hardly seems possible that it happened in what was then a dirty, rough city on the edge of the wilderness. I really only knew about the New White City portion of the fair – the beautiful, magnificent, educational buildings that appeared out of nowhere. What a treasure it would be if any of them had survived! But I had no idea that there had been an equally large midway and it’s really there that Schaffert sets his love story.

It's a love story that's melodramatic in all of the right ways and it feels every bit as Victorian as the time period it is set in. A murderous automaton, backgrounds that make both Ferrett and Cecily damaged goods, an incredibly wealthy man who will pull out all of the tricks to get what he wants, and a cast of characters that the Lincoln Journal-Star reviewer called lovable "Schaffert-esque." I know exactly what he meant - Schaffert always peoples his books with characters who are quirky, often damaged, and have emotional depth.

The Swan Gondola is certainly influenced by L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz but it is absolutely not a retelling, more of an homage. Schaffert includes a character named Dorothy, a balloonist who crash lands into another land, an Emerald Cathedral, and even a cyclone. To an extent, I suppose you could even say that the ending resembles Baum's book in a way. But it's also an ending that settles quietly, even as Schaffert throws one last surprise readers' way.

There is an element of spiritualism and even, perhaps, a bit of magic. You all know how I feel about magic in my books and I began to be concerned that a book I was enjoying so much was going to veer too far down that path. But Schaffert plays that perfectly for my tastes and I came away without feeling like he had copped out of trying to resolve his story in a mystical way.

I really don't know why this hasn't been optioned for a movie. In its scope, its characters, its story lines, I would love to see this on the big screen.

The Bones of Paradise by Jonis Agee

The Bones of Paradise by Jonis Agee
Published August 2016 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: my copy through the library for book club

Publisher's Summary:
Ten years after the Seventh Cavalry massacred more than two hundred Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee, J.B. Bennett, a white rancher, and Star, a young Native American woman, are murdered in a remote meadow on J.B.’s land. The deaths bring together the scattered members of the Bennett family: J.B.’s cunning and hard father, Drum; his estranged wife, Dulcinea; and his teenage sons, Cullen and Hayward. As the mystery of these twin deaths unfolds, the history of the dysfunctional Bennetts and their damning secrets is revealed, exposing the conflicted heart of a nation caught between past and future.

At the center of The Bones of Paradise are two remarkable women. Dulcinea, returned after bitter years of self-exile, yearns for redemption and the courage to mend her broken family and reclaim the land that is rightfully hers. Rose, scarred by the terrible slaughters that have decimated and dislocated her people, struggles to accept the death of her sister, Star, and refuses to rest until she is avenged.

A kaleidoscopic portrait of misfits, schemers, chancers, and dreamers, Jonis Agee’s bold novel is a panorama of America at the dawn of a new century. A beautiful evocation of this magnificent, blood-soaked land—its sweeping prairies, seas of golden grass, and sandy hills, all at the mercy of two unpredictable and terrifying forces, weather and lawlessness—and the durable men and women who dared to tame it.

My Thoughts:
When The Bones of Paradise was picked to be this year's Omaha Reads selection, one of my book club friends quickly suggested our book club read it and even grabbed one of the library's book club bags with books for us. It included an audiobook copy which I took with us on a recent trip. We got through one disc (which was no reflection on the book; just new terrain that involved more concentration for driving and navigating); my husband was already saying the book was "brutal." I wouldn't have thought that would scare him off but it did; he never asked to read or listen to it again. It did not, however, scare of the ladies of my book club. Not sure if that says more about my husband or my book club friends!

My husband was right; this book is often brutal. But life in the Sandhills of Nebraska in 1900 was brutal, from the weather to the people who inhabited it, and Agee's writing reflects all of the ways that life could be tough in 1900 western Nebraska, from ice storms to tornadoes to the American government to the men (and women) who lived there.

THIS is what the Lakota were
doing that so alarmed the Indian
agent who called in the military

As unforgiving as that land is, in Drum, J. B. and Ry Graver (who discovers the bodies of J. B. and Star) we see the lengths a person will go to to try to own their own piece of it. It makes some people harder, it breaks others, and it drives men to do things they wouldn't think themselves capable of to try to hold on to it.

As the story moves back and forth in time, in part to tell the background stories of many of the characters. But Agee says the real reason she told the story from multiple points of view was to "respect the events and Native Americans at Wounded Knee by making them as alive and as vivid as possible...I dramatized key events with my characters involved so that the impact of the massacre could be registered as horrific as it was." There are several characters who "were there" at Wounded Knee. (Drum, J. B., Ry, and Star). It's this day that is at the center of the book, pulling the story of what happened to the Indians in that area into the story of the Bennett family and the people surrounding them.

And THIS is what was done to the Lakota at Wounded Knee

I was glad to have read this book with a group. I had some questions when I finished and it helped to have people to bounce them off of, many of them having to do with the reason Cullen was sent to live with Drum and why Dulcinea left the ranch. I didn't entirely buy into Agee's reasoning but others in my book club found those reasons believable. All of the characters (with the possible exception of Rose) are deeply flawed and many of them are so hard that they are hard to care for. But Agee lets readers see the humanity in most of her characters and readers can understand what makes them the people they are.

About those murders...there is a murder mystery element to this book, after all...some in my book club figured out early on who killed J. B. and Star. Others were holding on to their own theories until the end. Either way, the slow reveal of what happened in that meadow was satisfying. The ending of the book, though, left some (including my mom) not as satisfied. My mom said she felt like Agee had gotten to the end of the book and didn't know how to finish it so rushed into the ending that we have here. Agee, herself, says she didn't know who killed J. B. and Star when she began writing the book but that she did rewrite the ending many times. One of our book club members said, "how would you have finished the book?" I'm not sure, to be honest. I just don't think it would have ended the way Agee ended it.

Still, it's a fascinating, complex novel, filled with interesting characters and dynamics, one in which the setting plays a very important role. Which, for this girl who was born in the Sandhills of Nebraska, is a very good thing.

Last Night At The Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert

Last Night At The Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert
Published  July 2014 by HarperCollins; paperback release April 2015 by William Morrow Paperbacks
Source: I bought my copy at the Omaha Lit Fest and had it autographed!

Publisher's Summary:
It is the early 1960s, and Chicago is teeming with the tensions of the day—segregation, sexual experimentation, the Cold War, and Vietnam—but it is also home to some of the country's most influential jazz. Naomi Hill, a singer at the Blue Angel club, has been poised on the brink of stardom for nearly ten years. But when her big break, the cover of Look magazine, finally arrives, it carries with it an enormous personal cost. Sensual and magnetic, Naomi is a fiercely ambitious yet self-destructive woman whose charms tend to hurt those around her, and no one knows this better than her daughter, Sophia.

As the only child of a single mother growing up in an adult world, Sophia is wise beyond her years, a casualty of her mother's desperate struggle for fame and adoration. Her only constant is the colorful and unconventional family that surrounds them, particularly the photographer Jim who is Sophia's best friend, surrogate father, and protector—but Jim is also deeply in love with Naomi.

My Thoughts:

"Mother is a singer. I live in her dark margins."

Do you remember the scene from the movie "Jerry Maguire" when Renee Zellweger's character says to Tom Cruise's character "You had me at hello?" That's the way I felt when I read those first two sentences of Chapter 1. Rotert's debut is beautifully written, filled with characters who will stay with me for a long time.

Told through a dual narrative, Rotert uses Sophia's voice to tell the story of their life in early 1960's Chicago while Naomi's past is seen through Sophie's eyes. It goes a long way to helping readers understand Naomi, not to look at her as an abusive parent, a woman who raises her daughter in a run-down apartment building, keeps her up late into the night, brings strangers home to spend the night and who is utterly absorbed in herself and her career. Instead we come to understand her need to desire to rise above the poverty of her youth, her need for love and her inability to accept it.

"I love David or perhaps I just found a way to matter to him, to be noticed. He has made me feel small and I hate him for that but I also long for him. I'm embarrassed."

Sophia adores Naomi, craves her attention, treasures the rare moments her mother notices her. She is what might be called "precocious," except so often means a child who is overly confident in her own abilities, exceptional in every way. But while Sophie is deeply perceptive, she is also very real - she struggles with math, worries about having friends, and carries around a notebook where she keeps a list of all of the things she will need to know how to make in case of nuclear disaster. Fortunately, she is surrounded by people who love her and try to make sure she gets what she needs. My favorite relationship was the one between Sophie and Jim, a man deeply in love with Naomi who acted as a pseudo-father for Sophia. Naomi may be the star on stage but Sophie is the heart and soul of this book.

I've owned this book since last fall; I bought it with the intention of reading it immediately but, as so often happens, it got set aside. Then the ladies at TLC asked me if I'd like to be on a tour for the book. "I'd love to and I already own the book," I eagerly replied! Thanks to them for giving me the push to pick up the book; I simply loved it. It's hard to believe it is Rotert's debut novel. Last fall Rotert said she writes what haunts her. After reading Last Night At The Blue Angel, it will haunt me as well. For other opinions on the book, check out the full tour.

In speaking about music in this book, last fall at the Omaha Lit Fest, Rotert said that she was raised on the American songbook so had Naomi raised this way as well so that she could use the music to show generational tensions. She said that authors have to choose what not to give their characters as well as what to give them. She chose not to give Naomi the chance to have her own voice, the ability to express herself only in song. Naomi was then left to express herself only through others which made her a less healthy person intentionally. Rotert said that in using music in her book, it was about trusting the reader to understand that the references advance the story even if they don't know the music. Despite all of the music in the book, Rotert said she writes in quiet.

Rebecca Rotert received an M.A. in literature from Hollins College, where she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets prize. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and other publications. She’s also an experienced singer and songwriter, who has performed with several bands, and a teacher with the Nebraska Writers Collective. She lives in Omaha, Nebraska.

I'm a little giddy about the kind of writing talent Omaha is turning out these days: Timothy Shaffert, Rainbow Rowell, and now Rebecca Rotert are all writers I'm delighted to share this city with. Maybe there's something in the water. Perhaps it's time to consider writing that novel?!

Top Ten Tuesday - Top Ten Bookish Memories

This week the ladies at The Broke and The Bookish have asked us to share our top ten best bookish memories. Here goes, in now particular order, my favorite bookish memories:

1. Sitting in the hallway of my parents house with my dad and my siblings while my dad, in his theatrical way of reading, read us great classic books including Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I know it wasn't the only time he ever read to us; they are just the times that stick out foremost in my memories.

2. Hours and hours in the library of Eastridge Elementary School, back when a library was a library and not a media center. My very smart teachers figured out pretty quickly that this girl would work hard to earn extra time there. Some of my favorite finds there were these booklets of plays we were allowed to perform on Friday afternoons. I wish I could remember what those books were called!

3. It's seems odd to think now, but I still vividly recall getting a lot of the books I got as a child. We didn't have as many books in ye olden days so books were a real treasure. I remember opening Little Women, Little Men, James and the Giant Peach, Heidi, and The Five Little Peppers And How They Grew. Yep, I was raised on books that even then were classics. Now wonder I love them still.

4. Charles H. Gere Branch Library: hours in the summer finding books for the summer reading program; hours in middle school doing research with friends...and flirting with the boys who were there "doing homework," too. Sorry, Mom!

5. Reading with my own children (including out in the hall, sitting on the floor between bedrooms) has spawned a myriad of memories, tiny little gems of moments. One of the standouts was when Mini-me and I were nearing the end of E.B. White's The Trumpet of The Swan and I realized there were tears in his eyes. Not necessarily because the book was so sad (I don't even recall now if it was at that point) but because the book was nearly done. He had fallen that deeply into the book that he couldn't bear to see it end. I was sad for him but also so happy that he was going to grow up loving books that much.

6. When Mini-him was little and there weren't so many grandchildren to adore and they weren't all running off to play with each other, there used to be time for my dad to sit with Mini-him and read. They didn't sit on the floor in the hall any more but snuggled together in a chair or on the sofa. Mini-him, uncharacteristically, rapt as his grandpa turned him on to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn just as he had me more than 20 years earlier. To this day, it remains one of Mini-him's favorite books.

7. In the fall of 2010, the editors of Omaha.net asked if I'd be interested in attending (downtown) Omaha Lit Fest and writing an article. What? There's a lit fest in Omaha? Heck yes, I was interested. I raved about the lit fest often enough in the past couple of years for you all to know how impressed I was that year by the writers, by the panel topics, and by the efforts of the organizers. You will most especially recall how it sparked an rekindled interest in fairy tales and launched Fairy Tale Fridays. I was so disappointed to have to miss it this year!

8.  I began interacting with author Jennie Nash on her blog after reading her book The Last Beach Bungalow and we struck up a fun correspondence that resulted in her asking me if I would like a copy of her then soon-to-be published book The Threadbare Heart. A few days later, a package arrived at my door. It is no exaggeration to say that I squealed, teared up a little and yes, I may actually have hugged the package for a while before I even opened it. Of course, you all know this story already - I've written about it several times!

9. Some months after that first Omaha Lit Fest, I saw in the paper that author Mary Helen Stefaniak would be speaking at a local indie bookstore. I grabbed my daughter (kicking and screaming) and insisted that we couldn't possibly not support an author coming to town. After all, I'd heard Stefaniak speak at the Lit Fest and was thrilled to get to see her again so soon. Imagine my surprise, then, to have her introduced as being a teacher at Creighton University, right here in Omaha. Seriously. A real, published author from right here in Omaha. Okay, I knew she wasn't the only one but still.

10. A few months after that I worked up the nerve to contact Stefaniak to see if she'd be interested in speaking with the Omaha Bookworms. Not only was she interested, she actually came to the meeting. This lovely woman took time out of her own life to spend the evening charming the book club and joining us in a wonderful discussion of her book The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia as well as joining us in cheering the St. Louis Cardinals on in the World Series. Really, authors are just people, too. Sort of.

Stefaniak, covering her face, as we tease her about being the star of the show

Guest Post - Rainbow Rowell, Author of "Attachments"

Please join me today in welcoming to Lit and Life Rainbow Rowell, author of Attachments, which comes out in paperback this today. My review of Attachments can be found here; I found it to be a lot of fun with unexpected depth. Penguin Group has kindly offered a copy of the book to one lucky winner. Please leave a comment telling me about something funny that's happened to you at work, by Sunday, April 1 (U.S. residents only). It's not a surprise that the book is fun - Rainbow is a lot of fun! Here's what she has to say about developing her characters for this book:

"When I started writing Attachments, I felt it was a story about friendship. Specifically the way email has changed women’s friendships.

When I was a kid, my mom would have marathon phone calls with her best friends. It’s how they stayed caught up with each other’s lives.

But email changed that, especially for women who work outside the home. When I need to update my friends on my life, I turn to my keyboard.

So I imagined writing this book that captured a digital friendship. Beth and Jennifer’s relationship really lives in their inboxes. Most of their joking, hanging out – even comforting each other – happens screen to screen.

I wrote all of their email conversations first, always knowing that there would be a third character in their story – Lincoln, the IT guy whose job it is to monitor their company’s email.

But I didn’t give him much thought. He was just “the guy who’s going to fall in love with Beth.” Once I’d written the Beth/Jennifer parts, I went back to the beginning of the book to write Lincoln . . .

That’s when I realized that I was writing a book about a guy.

Though Beth and Jennifer are important, Lincoln is the main character of Attachments. Everything happens from his point of view. I wrote Beth and Jennifer through their fingertips, but I had to write Lincoln from inside his head.

Which was really scary.

I don’t know what it’s like inside of a 28-year-old guy’s head. Just thinking about it made me set my manuscript aside for a few months. I thought that my narration would sound like a woman who was trying to sound like a man. Like writing in drag.

I did get over that eventually. I just thought of all the male authors I knew who wrote great women characters. “Lincoln is a man,” I told myself. “Not a unicorn. You can do this.”

Once I started writing Lincoln, his point of view felt completely natural to me. I felt so comfortable in his head that the entire story shifted around him – it became his book…his story.

Though Attachments is still a book about friendship – it’s more about purpose.

All three of the characters, but especially Lincoln, has reached that point in their late 20s where they realize that they can’t just wait for life to deliver the things that they want: Love. A family. Fulfilling work. Lincoln has been waiting for these things to fall on his head, but he’s never put himself out there far enough to get hit.

Attachments, through Lincoln’s eyes, became a book about vulnerability – about getting in life’s way to make sure that it doesn’t pass you by."

Thanks, Rainbow! I can't wait to get my hands on the next book, Eleanor and Park!

Sunday Salon - November 6

November, already? How did that happen while I wasn't looking? It's been such an unusual and busy year for me and my reading time has really taken a hit. Heading into the holiday season, I'm going to have to accept that it's not going to get any better the rest of the year. That being said, I'm tossing in the towel on all challenges. I'm going to try to read some of the books that I'd planned for them but I'm giving myself permission to "fail" without guilt.

Now for that promised picture from last month's Omaha Bookworms meeting. Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA is third from the left. What fun we had talking with Mary Helen about her books, her family and even baseball. Hmm, now that we've seen how great it is to have an author in our midst, I wonder how Timothy Schaffert (also from Omaha) would feel about joining us to talk about The Little Coffins of Hope?

Added to my wish list this week: Catherine The Great by Robert K. Massie, Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman, The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman, The Wandering Falcon by Ahmad Jamil, The Boy In The Suitcase by Lena Kaaberol and Agnete Friis, and James Madison by Richard Brookhiser. It's probably bad to add this many books at a time given how little I've been reading lately!

Fans of Sarah Jio's, The Violets of March, will be happy to know that she's got a new book, The Bungalow, coming out this December. Here's a little teaser for you:



 I'm finishing Vivienne Schiffer's Camp Nine for a TLC Book Tour this week. Then I'm back to reading The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin, the Omaha Bookworms December selection. What are you reading this week? What books did you add to your wish list?

Sunday Salon - October 30

Happy 29th anniversary to my beloved Big Guy! This year has really served to remind us both of those vows we said before our family and friends all of those years ago. And how did we celebrate, you may ask? Last night we enjoyed dinner at a wonderful Italian restaurant but today we have spent most of the day going our own ways - he to enjoy the beautiful fall colors and me to have Miss H's senior pictures taken. Here's what he saw today:

Thursday evening The Omaha Bookworms enjoyed a wonderful evening with Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA. Ms. Stefaniak stepped in and immediately became one of the gang, particularly when she mentioned to group that she was interested in the World Series game. When you let on to a group of women, half of whom have spent some time in St. Louis, that you're cheering for the Cardinals, you have made yourself a group of friends! We started by picking her brain about her writing process and ended by talking about the Ku Klux Klan--what a fantastic conversation! Pictures to come!

I've mentioned before that the Omaha Bookworms is a diverse group of women; we count among our members our own political activist. You have probably not heard of the Trans-Canada effort to build a pipeline through Nebraska but it really is something that everyone should be concerned about given that its planned route takes it directly over the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world's largest aquifers. That's gotten our former President of the League of Women Voters so riled up that she appeared in front of the state legislature in her Susan B. Anthony outfit, something she may regret having told a blogger! Here she is in action:



This evening we're enjoying some literary television. First we watched "Once Upon A Time" which I'm thoroughly enjoying (but The Big Guy says it feels like "Desperate Housewives" goes goth to him). Now we're watching "Case Histories" on PBS, a series based on Kate Atkinson's books about Jackson Brodie with this episode based on her book "When Will There Be Good News." We both quite liking this and wish we would have caught the first two episodes.

I'm finishing up Steve Inskeep's Instant City for a TLC Book Tour this week. I'll also have reviews of Julia Child's My Life In France and The Kitchen Counter Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn. What's on your reading agenda this week?

Sunday Salon - October 16

Another week with very little reading done. So frustrating - not just because it means I'm not reading but also because it means I'm not finding enough time to relax. Got a promotion at work recently and it's going to mean more work hours, particularly for the next few weeks so I'm not sure when I'm going to find good chunks of reading time again. I'm going to have to get more organized so I have some "me" time every day. Everyone around me will be safer if I do!

Lucinda Riley's The Girl On The Cliff arrived in my mailbox this week unannounced. I'm never sure quite how to feel about books that arrive without my having requested them. I have a hard enough time keeping up with the ones I buy, read for book club, request, and do tours for as it is. But still...free books? Hard to argue with that. This one is historical fiction so that appeals to me. The blurb on the back makes it sound a bit reminiscent of Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden which I had mixed feelings about. I withhold judgement until I read it; who knows when that might be, though!

The Omaha Lit Fest was held this weekend. It's something I've been looking forward to since last year. Unfortunately, it's also something that was impacted by my increased work hours. I was only able to attend two sessions yesterday afternoon. Not surprisingly, they were both great - wonderful panel discussions by both authors I love and authors that are new to me. I was disappointed to learn that Rainbow Rowell's (Attachments) next book won't be released in the U.S. until next fall, despite that fact that she had in her possession a bound, uncorrected copy of it. It will come out in England in April. Wonder if I can get someone there to send me a copy? Got to introduce myself to Mary Helen Stefaniak (The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA) and talk about her upcoming visit with the Omaha Book Worms. Can't wait for that! Came away with three books: Timothy Shaffert's Devils In The Sugar Shop, Carolyn Turgeon's Mermaid and Jo Ann Mapes' Solomon's Way.

This week I'll finish Julie Powell's Julie and Julia and start Kathleen Flinn's Kitchen Counter Cooking School. Hopefully I'll also have time to get to Julia Child's My Life In France as well. What are you reading this week?

Sunday Salon - October 9

What a crazy week I've had...again! Prefer not to have another one like it but, on the plus side, I've had something of my own reading marathon the past four days. I managed to finished the better part of one book and two more and I've gotten a good start on a fourth book. Now that does feel good!

My month of Fall Feasting will finally kick off this week with a reviews of Four Kitchens by Lauren Shockey and Table of Contents by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp. Next up for my foodie reading is (finally!) Julie Powell's Julie and Julia. I might just have to follow this one up with a girls' movie night. My sister, niece, daughter and I all went to see the movie in the theater and loved it. I'm thinking we'll kick the guys out, get some popcorn and candy, and create the fun.

This week I'll also be reviewing Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes for a TLC Book Tour. Capa was a Hungarian combat photographer; the story of Capa and his love, Gerta Taro, have interested me since I first learned about him a couple of years ago so I jumped at the chance to read this one.

Next weekend is the Omaha Lit Fest. I believe I've mentioned (a few hundred times) how impressed I was with last year's event. Needless to say I'm really looking forward to this year's event and getting a chance to introduce myself to Mary Helen Stefaniak (The Cailiffs of Baghdad, GA). Ms. Stefaniak teaches at Creighton University, here in Omaha, and I'm so excited that she's agreed to meet with the Omaha Bookworms in person this month!

Next up for me this week is The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn. I'm hearing great things about this one so I'm really looking forward to it. What are you reading this week?

Sunday Salon - May 22

Happy Sunday, everyone! It's been a busy weekend for us, trailing a busy week, but we were so happy to be able to share in the celebration of my brother's youngest's graduation from high school. Congrats, Tigger! Part of the fun of any of these kinds of celebrations is getting to be with family and we're very lucky to get the chance to be with most of them again next weekend when my sister's youngest graduations as well. Looking forward to sharing that with her!

The drive there and back gave me a great chance to get some reading in which was a good thing because I couldn't put down Tom Franklin's "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter." For me, it's definitely worthy of all of the praise it's received.

Now it's on to Henry Kissinger's On China.  I've mentioned before that my dad used to teach current events classes and always had the news on every evening. Growing up in when I did, that meant that Henry Kissinger was a person that I heard a lot about. I'm not sure I'll agree with him (we have pretty different political viewpoints) but I do respect his experience and knowledge and I'm looking forward to his thoughts on a very power country.

Mercy arrived in my mailbox this past week. I've been really cutting way back on taking on books for the coming months but being of Danish descent, I couldn't pass up this one by Danish author, Jussi Adler-Olsen.



Think I'll be reading this one only when it's light out!

Timothy Schaffert, author of The Coffins of Little Hope has created a companion site for the book. As you may recall from my interview, part of the book revolves around a children's book series and this site is the site that the publisher of those books would have set up. The Coffins of Little Hope has now gone into it's second printing!

I've recently learned that Rainbow Rowell's Attachments is also available in audio form for those of you who also enjoy audio books. I'm also hoping to be able to post an interview with Rowell soon--we're trying to put that together!

What's on your agenda for the coming week? Do you have big plans for the holiday weekend?

The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia: A Novel by Mary Helen Stefaniak

The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia by Mary Helen Stefaniak
352 pages
Published September 2010 by Norton, W. W. and Company
Source: bought it at The Bookworm and had it signed!

When Miss Grace Spivey arrives in Threestep, Georgia in 1939 to teach in the one-room classroom, she turns the small town on it's head. She's got a world view and the opinion that blacks are the equals of whites and every bit as entitled to a good education as any of the white children in her school. Gladys Cailiff, our eleven-year-old narrator for most of the book, takes an immediate liking to Miss Spivey and the Miss Spivey takes an immediate liking to all of the Cailiffs, including Gladys's brother's Ralphord and Force and sisters May and Ildred.

"Two year later, she [Miss Spivey] told a cheery blue-suited woman from the WPA that she wanted to bring democracy and education to the poorest, darkest, most remote and forgotten corner of America.

They sent her to Threestep, Georgia."

Threestep is indeed remote and forgotten. "In 1938, a lot of folks in Piedmont County were still pretty much in awe of the miracle of the airwaves." Miss Spivey's introduces the children to The Thousand Nights and A Night, reading the children the Sir Richard Burton's translation after the local library proved to only have a children's picture book version.

"Miss Spivey proceeded immediately to the "A" drawer herself to look for another edition of The Arabian Nights, but there was only the one. "A children's picture book!" she said then, sounding so put out  that Miss Eunice Spears [the librarian] hurried over to assure her that, despite the turbans and all, there was nothing offensive or inappropriate for children in the book. She had made certain of that."

Everyone becomes engrossed in the stories, especially Miss Spivey, who soon decides the spring festival the school usually puts on will now become an Arabian Nights celebration, complete with camels. Before long, the entire county becomes involved, although convincing the church leaders took some doing; after all, the people in the stories were "heathens." School is almost entirely devoted to the creation of costumes, the making of sets and the practicing of parts. But the involvement of the black people has the local Ku Klux Klan leader on edge and the entire celebration sets off a chain of events that will forever change the lives of everyone in Threestep.

In The Cailiffs of Baghdad, George, Stefaniak as created her own version of The Thousand Nights And A Night, crafting a story withing a story within story, taking the reader from 1939 Georgia back in time to 1775 Baghdad, Iraq and 1864 Savannah, Georgia. She creates a Southern tale so spot on that it's hard to believe that this is a writer who was born in Milwaukee and now splits her time between Omaha and Iowa City. Stefaniak's mother is from Georgia and when I heard her speak last summer, she credited that family with much of the inspiration for this book.

In Gladys, Stefaniak has given the reader a delightful voice and captured that innocence and awe that only found in a child of that age. The book is filled with interesting, believable characters including Theo Boykin, the smartest person in the county who also happens to be black and Uncle Mack, the camel man. Stefaniak manages to touch on a number of themes including racism, religion, and big business vs. landowners. While the story stayed in 1939 Georgia, I was rapt. In the last third of the book, Stefaniak travels back in time, spending a long period away from Threestep. While this part of the book was certainly interesting, I found myself losing track of the original story and getting lost in all of the new characters. Overall, though, I found the book delightful, often nodding my head or chuckling. Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews both called the book "engaging" and I would have to agree.

Stefaniak signing books at Omaha's The Bookworm

To learn more about Steniak and her other books, including The Turk and My Mother, visit her website.

This wraps up my month dedicated to Omaha authors, although I've noticeably left out mystery/thriller writer Alex Kava (completely unintentionally!). I'll write more about her soon. In looking at Stefaniak's website, I see that the Nebraska Book Festival is coming up in May. I didn't even know such a thing existed! Unfortunately, I'm planning to be out of town that weekend but if my plans change, you know I'll be traveling to Lincoln instead to attend the Festival.