Love, Water, Memory by Jennie Shortridge

Love, Water, Memory by Jennie Shortridge
Published  April 2013 by Gallery Books
Source: my copy purchased for my Nook

Publisher's Summary:
If you could do it all over again, would you still choose him?If you could do it all over again, would you still choose him?

At age thirty-nine, Lucie Walker has no choice but to start her life over when she comes to, up to her knees in the chilly San Francisco Bay, with no idea how she got there or who she is. Her memory loss is caused by an emotional trauma she knows nothing about, and only when handsome, quiet Grady Goodall arrives at the hospital does she learn she has a home, a career, and a wedding just two months away. What went wrong? Grady seems to care for her, but Lucie is no more sure of him than she is of anything. As she collects the clues of her past self, she unlocks the mystery of what happened to her. The painful secrets she uncovers could hold the key to her future—if she trusts her heart enough to guide her.

My Thoughts:
Jennie Shortridge writes chick lit with depth and heart. Yes, they are love stories. Yes, you will have a pretty good idea how the book will end. In this case, that's one of the reasons I read this book when I did. I needed something that, even though there might be incredibly sad or difficult parts, would end exactly as I wanted it to end. On that score, Shortridge did not disappoint, which I'm sure won't surprise you.

Publisher's Weekly did have this to say about the book:

"They’ll have to swallow some implausible plot turns and dubious character motivations along the way, but most will likely be too interested in Lucie’s slowly unfolding backstory to mind."

They are absolutely correct. Right from the first few pages, I cared about Lucie and wanted to find out what had happened to her that resulted in her going into a dissociative fugue (the current medical term for amnesia). And I so wanted Grady to have a happily-ever-after. Still, Shortridge does, in fact, force readers to buy into some plot points which are improbable. For example, Grady seems to want very little to do with his family despite the fact that they also seem to be very close. And for a guy who seems to want all six of his sisters to butt out of his life, he fell in love with a woman who was every bit as controlling. And that is the least of the issues of believability I had with the book.

And yet...

Shortridge made me do some research into amnesia when I doubted that someone suffering from amnesia would come to with an entirely different personality. They can. Which was a good thing, because I don't think I would have cared what happened to pre-amnesia Lucie. Post-amnesia Lucie was a woman working very hard to win over the man who so clearly loves her (although she can't seem to believe it), to find her own, new happiness, and to find out what happened to chase her away. That answer turned out to be twofold. And even though I wised up to what happened before we go to that part, it was shockingly sad, nevertheless.

Is it a great book? No. Was it just the book I needed when I read it? Absolutely.

Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow

Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
Published 1975
Source: my copy purchased years ago!

Publisher's Summary:
The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. And almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears. Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, J. P. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.


My Thoughts:
This is what I had to say about this book when I picked it as a favorite back in 2009:

"My favorite this week is E. L. Doctorow's "Ragtime," a brilliant exploration of a moment in time. Doctorow weaves fiction and reality in this novel and explores issues that resonate even today. Weaving in historical figures, including Harry Houdini, Sigmund Freud, and J P Morgan, with some of the most memorable characters in literature, Doctorow explores racism, sexism and class structure at the turn of the last century."

Ten years later, I've just re-read this book and I've gotta say that my opinion of it hasn't changed. I may be even more impressed with the way Doctorow managed to give readers such a complete sense of life at the turn of the last century - the mores, the business and political climates, the wealth gap, the transportation, the fashion, the status of women, and the prejudices against different races and cultures.

The three families that Doctorow writes about in Ragtime are symbolic of their peers - an upper-middle class white family, a black family, and an immigrant family. In order to make sure readers understand that these families are symbols, Doctorow strips the white family and the immigrant family of names, referring to them throughout the book only by their positions in the family - Mother, Tateh, Younger Brother, the little girl. But he writes each character so fully three-dimensionally that readers will still feel that they know these people.

I hadn't recalled just how much of the book is devoted to famous people of the time. Some are only mentioned in passing, others are given quite a lot of print space. Of those listed above, only Emma Goldman truly interacts for any time with the family. Often, Doctorow entirely goes away from the plot line that is entirely fictional, to write about the famous people and sometime, even on re-read, I struggled to find my way back to the meat of the story. Yet, their pieces are instrumental in setting up the climate of the time and in explaining why the things that happened with our fiction characters happen.

It's no surprise that this book connected with people when it was published in 1975 - that was a time of sexual revolution, the civil rights movement was still on people's minds, and the economic downturn the country was just beginning to recover from highlighted the difference between the haves and the have-nots. In 2009, I wrote that the issues Doctorow addressed still resonated; in 2019, I think that's even more true with the resurrection of a feminist movement, Black Lives Matter, the increasing gap between the top ten percent and the rest of us, and the pressure on police forces to reduce their abuses of power.

I believe I first read this book after I saw that 1981 Milos Forman movie adaptation. Since that time, it has remained one of my all-time favorite books. I've read so many books since that time that I feared a re-read would diminish the book in my opinion. It did not. This will continue to be a book that I recommend to everyone. It is a magnificent blend of fact and fiction filled with memorable characters and themes that will always speak to readers.

Memorial Day

Life: It Goes On - May 26

It's an absolutely glorious morning here. It would be the perfect Sunday morning to spend lazily enjoying breakfast on the patio except that our neighbor started mowing right about the time we decided to eat. Nothing says summer has arrived quite like the suburbs coming alive early in the morning to the sounds of yard work getting done before it gets too hot!

Last Week I:

Listened To: Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's The Nest which I decided on while I was waiting for my next hold to come in which was supposed to be in a couple of weeks. It arrived three days later. But I was half way through The Nest by then so I didn't want to give up on that. Now I'm hoping to get through it in time to have time to listen to Marlon James' Black Leopard Red Wolf before it gets returned.

Watched: The Big Ten baseball tournament, the first episode of Gentleman Jack (quite liked it and am looking forward to watching more), and the final two episodes of this season's Grace and Frankie. Not sure how I'm feeling about that show this season - it's starting to feel played out and isn't as funny.

Read: A book I was supposed to read for review had to be rescheduled which left me with the chance to pull something older off the shelves (and my shelves, I mean my Nook). I'm racing through Jennie Shortridge's Love, Water, Memory. It has me doing research on amnesia and you know how much I like books that make me dig deeper!

Made: Quite possibly the best homemade mac 'n' cheese I've ever made. Which I will never be able to replicate because I just threw in whatever cheeses I had in the fridge in whatever quantity I had. I'm certainly willing to work hard to try to replicate it!

Enjoyed: Lots of time with my kids this week.

This Week I’m: 

Planning: On spending the next couple of days rearranging and redecorating the better part of my basement to turn it into a living room for Miss H. Artwork is being changed out, slipcovers have been made, and rugs are being switched. Then it's on to her room which is sorely in need of a paint job and will need a decorating refresh since we've pulled out the things we're using downstairs.

Thinking About: Making some changes.

Feeling: Proud of Miss H who celebrated a milestone this week.

Looking forward to: My goodness - another quiet week!

Question of the week: Will you be attending Memorial Day services this weekend?

Resistance Women by Jennifer Chiaverini

Resistance Women by Jennifer Chiaverini
Published May 2019 by William Morrow
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
After Wisconsin graduate student Mildred Fish marries brilliant German economist Arvid Harnack, she accompanies him to his German homeland, where a promising future awaits. In the thriving intellectual culture of 1930s Berlin, the newlyweds create a rich new life filled with love, friendships, and rewarding work—but the rise of a malevolent new political faction inexorably changes their fate.

As Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party wield violence and lies to seize power, Mildred, Arvid, and their friends resolve to resist. Mildred gathers intelligence for her American contacts, including Martha Dodd, the vivacious and very modern daughter of the US ambassador. Her German friends, aspiring author Greta Kuckoff and literature student Sara Weitz, risk their lives to collect information from journalists, military officers, and officials within the highest levels of the Nazi regime.

For years, Mildred’s network stealthily fights to bring down the Third Reich from within. But when Nazi radio operatives detect an errant Russian signal, the Harnack resistance cell is exposed, with fatal consequences.

Inspired by actual events, Resistance Women is an enthralling, unforgettable story of ordinary people determined to resist the rise of evil, sacrificing their own lives and liberty to fight injustice and defend the oppressed.

My Thoughts:
Mildred Fish Harnack? She was a  real person, an American living in German with her German husband as Adolf Hitler rose to power. An American who was so upset by what she saw happening that she decided to do something to help those at greatest risk. Greta Kuckoff? Also a real person. As was Martha Dodd (I talked about Martha when I reviewed Erik Larson's In The Garden of Beasts, the story of William Dodd's time as the American ambassador to Germany).

I'm always impressed when an author can weave together the lives of real people and a fictional narrative and Chiaverini is terrific at it. Her books never feel like she's tried to get everything she learned about a subject into a book and the fictional characters always blend so well with the real people she's included. You've heard me say many times that I'm sort of over reading books about World War II. But I keep going back to them because there continue to be new stories to tell. Here, Chiaverini looks at the rise of the Nazis through the eyes of several regular citizens of various backgrounds. In particular, through her characters, she explores the way the citizens of Germany fell under the sway of Hitler and the Nazi party. Chiaverini very much seems to be using this book, too, as a way to make people take a look at what is happening in our country these days. As a cautionary tale, it's scary as hell.

The book is very detailed as Chiaverini follows these women through about ten years, some times too detailed. At almost 600 pages, I did feel that the book could have been trimmed down some without losing any of the details that made us care about these women or any of the history that was so important to the story. It still would have been a frightening book, still a terribly sad book, still a book that tells important stories.

Thanks to the ladies of TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions, check out the full tour.

About Jennifer Chiaverini

Jennifer Chiaverini is the New York Times bestselling author of several acclaimed historical novels and the beloved Elm Creek Quilts series. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, she lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin.

Find out more about Jennifer at her website, and connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

If you're interested in owning a copy of this book. find it at HarperCollins.