“Faith
is a strange creature…like a falcon that nests year after year in the same
place, but then flies away…only to return again, stronger than ever.” Cardinal
Shuster
21 Bookers met at the home of Daryl Daniels for our
meeting and discussion of this month’s selection led by Patty Evans. We shared
a moment of silence and prayers for Elaine Bownes undergoing abdominal surgery
and a complete hysterectomy in connection with her primary peritoneal cancer;
for Sheri Green who continues with her chemotherapy treatments; and for Bernie
Crudden, who on January 19 will endure robotic Cyberknife surgery to tap a
nerve in her neck with radiation to relieve the excruciating pain she has been
experiencing, hopefully eliminating the need for pain medications.
On the business side:
We had a few items to discuss before focusing on this
month’s selection. In the past Bookers
discouraged serving food at the meetings
for two reasons – one our focus has always been on the book and secondly, we
wanted those who volunteered their homes not to feel obligated to provide
anything other than coffee, juice, and water. From now on, the host will make
the call, but please keep in mind our intent is not to be a “you-top-it” type
of organization.
On Tuesday, January 23, I’m honored to be addressing
the Cedar Creek Women’s Club about Life in a Box. Michael Hannigan,
editor of Henderson County Now, will be covering the event. Book signing will
begin at 10:30 a.m. with my presentation slated for 11:15 followed by lunch. The
majority of you know everything you would ever want to know about my book, but
if you would like to come, the luncheon is $12.00 and Penny Barshop will
include you as a guest. Let me know by January 15.
We have several new members of Bookers and feel it is
important to share a little history of our book club. Fourteen years ago, our
PWC President, Melba Holt, and Social Chairman, Jean Alexander, recognized a
need for a book club for our members. MN Stanky and I jumped at the opportunity
and here we are (although she is in our “satellite” office in Alabama now.) We’ve
read 128 books for Bookers alone, facilitated Amish and Happiness studies,
poetry appreciation month and personality testing, and listened with our hearts
as Rosa Blum, a Holocaust survivor, recounted the horrors and joys that life
had thrown in her path. Bookers is successful because of our different
perspectives on the books we read. We all learn and process information
differently and our goal has always been to offer book selections that foster a
lively discussion from various points of view. This concept has kept us from
being ‘Bookers in a Box.” Many of you are aware there is a new smaller book
club in town formed by Paula Butcher focusing on bestsellers and classics to be
discussed over lunch. Books have their own power source – they are called
readers – and as both a reader and a writer, there can never be too many. We are
happy that the love of books continues to spread throughout our community and
encourage participation in either or both opportunities.
You might have an interest in a new release by Rachel
Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. (Bookers, March 2014)
Her latest, The Music Shop, is set in the late 1980’s. Editorial
and customer reviews are generally positive. Language and blasphemy were the
reasons given for a rare three star review.
Cold
Mountain, a 1997 historical fiction by Charles
Frazier, follows a wounded Confederate Army deserter who walks for months to
return to the love of his life and the mountains of North Carolina. Recommended
by Lee McFarlane. Also a 2003 movie starring Nicole Kidman.
Later in 2018, Melanie Prebis will review one of her
favorite books, A Prayer for Owen Meany, a 1989 release by John Irving – the
story of two young friends growing up in a small New Hampshire town in the
1950’s-1960’s.
**********
Mark Sullivan joined the Peace Corp after graduating
from college, teaching high school English to students in West Africa. Upon
returning to the States, he began a career as an investigative reporter before
writing eighteen novels including the bestselling “Private” series with
James Patterson. This biographical/historical fiction at times reads like a
literary nonfiction narrative then lapses back into his journalistic style of
writing. The novel, chocked full of characters and stories at every turn, seems
impossible for all of that to have happened to one person, but documentation
reveals the accuracy of the tales. The author spent ten years researching and
writing this novel, resulting in Pino’s story surfacing after six decades of
silence. Seventy-nine year old Pino remembered what the love of his life had
said, “By opening our hearts, revealing our scars, we are made human and flawed
and whole.” It was time for him to reveal his scars.
Patty Evans, as always, provided a thorough and
entertaining review of Beneath a Scarlet Sky, showing a
photo book of the small crowded village of Asolo perched on a hilltop in Northern Italy,
similar to the community where the Lella family lived and worked. Asking for a
show of hands of those who had not finished the book, she opted not to discuss
the ending avoiding spoiling it for those yet to finish. The novel details the
untold tale of a seventeen-year-old Italian boy, Pino Lella, between June 1943
and May 1945 during the Nazi occupation.
Pino Lella wants nothing to do with the war or
the Nazis. He’s a normal Italian teenager—obsessed with music (especially jazz)
food, and girls—but his days of innocence are numbered. When Allied bombs
destroyed his home in Milan, Pino joins an underground network helping Jews
escape over the Alps, and falls for Anna, a beautiful widow six years his
senior.
In an attempt to protect him, Pino’s parents
force him to enlist as a German soldier—a move they think will keep him out of
combat. But after Pino is injured, he is recruited at the tender age of
eighteen to become the personal driver for Adolf Hitler’s left hand in Italy,
General Hans Leyers, one of the Third Reich’s most mysterious and powerful
commanders.
Now, with the opportunity to spy for the
Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and
the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love
for Anna and for the life he dreams they will share one day.
Our discussion offered many personal stories of family
involved in war, revealing the universal theme of our “Greatest Generation,”
before and beyond…the refusal to talk about their experiences once they
returned home. Statistics show that 88% of veterans returning from war have had
direct experience of violence – either as a witness, a victim, or having caused
it. What we lose with this silence are the legacies of the men and women who
defended our freedom. We talked about Pino’s innate ability as a teenager to
step into a leadership role with insight beyond his years, possessing fearless bravery
and casting out the threat of dying, begging the question, are leaders born or
made? I posed the question to one of my friends who has written books on
leadership and counsels CEO’s on how to be more effective leaders. His answer,
“leaders clearly are made not born because a person’s character is shaped from
the moment they come into the world by their circumstances, profoundly
influenced by parents, mentors, and their circle of friends in all cases –
either good or bad.” He believes “you are a product of the ten people you spend
the most time with…and a “person’s value system of right and wrong, their focus
on a purpose that’s bigger than themselves, and their drive to live it and
achieve it is influenced, not wired in at birth.”
Taking a look at Pino’s family, we find the answer to
his maturity – the people who surrounded him – his no-nonsense mother, his
father’s ability to tune out the world’s misery with the sound of music; his
little brother’s dependency and admiration for him; the respect of his friends;
his Uncle Albert who encouraged him to drive the Nazi General and become a spy;
Father Re who preached not to “let your heart be troubled, trust in the Lord”
making no moral judgment on anyone including the Nazis. Look around – who are
the ten that made you?
One of the most complicated characters in the novel
was General Leyers as he portrayed both good and evil doing everything he could
do to insure his people did not starve and in the end, saved himself. His
mantra, “always do favors for others because they will owe you.” The theory
worked well for his survival.
Bonnie Magee, not able to be at the meeting, called in
her comment and approval of the book. “Since I am such a Pollyanna, having the preface to
this book was magical. The holocaust and the war were horrific. Reading
about different events was much easier for me since the preface made it like a
“flashback,” and I wasn’t constantly “on edge.”
Rokhshie Malone, happily huddled up
in Crested Butte, wanted to know, “Why is a seventeen/eighteen year old boy running around town at
all hours, instead of being in school or college?" Our input – it seems
this was a norm among teenagers then. “I
am enjoying the book, and one thing is very clear - the Italian Jews were
forgotten and as stated, the Italians did not want to discuss it afterwards,
and relegated it to the past with no recollection. Sad!”
As
Patty began, I’ll finish by leaving the ending to you. Pino cherished the words
Anna lived by…she didn’t believe much in the future…tried to live moment by
moment, always looking for reasons to be grateful… creating her own happiness
and grace and using them as a means to a good life in the present and not a
goal to be achieved some other day.
COLOR
CODING SYSTEM
WHITE: LIGHT READ
PINK: MODERATELY
CHALLENGING
RED: CHALLENGING
February
13 The Mourning Parade by
Dawn Reno Langley
The mother of two sons
killed in a school shooting leaves her successful veterinary practice to
volunteer in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand.
LIGHT RED
Home
of Bonnie Magee
Reviewer:
Jean Alexander
March
13 The
Rainwater Secret by Monica Shaw
Debut historical fiction
by Dallas author based on the life of her great aunt, a missionary woman in
Africa teaching leper children.
PINK
Home
of Patty Evans
We
are excited to announce the author will be joining us for the meeting
April
10 The
Uncertain Season by Texas author Ann Howard Creel
Follows the lives of
three women in the aftermath of the 1900 hurricane that devastated
Galveston…one living a privileged life, her disgraced and flamboyant cousin,
and an unnamed girl living on the streets.
Home
of Sandy Molander
Reviewer:
TBD
May
15 Change of date due to travel plans
To Everything A Season
– Sherri Schaeffer, a debut set in Amish country in Lancaster Pennsylvania
where two worlds collide forcing them together.
Home
of Donna Walter
Reviewer:
TBD
Summer
Read: America’s
First Daughter by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie
Thomas Jefferson’s eldest
daughter, Martha, “Patsy” becomes the keeper of the secrets and her father’s
confidant after her mother’s death and his appointment as the American Minister
to France.
“Without
books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and
speculation at a standstill.”
Happy Reading,
JoDee
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