Home

I have just read Home #1 through #5 and it is fantastic. It is the story of a mother and son who leave Guatemala on foot and enter the U. S. illegally. Mercedes Gomez and eight year old Juan do not speak English and are surprised to find out the there is a new American president who has closed the border. When they left Guatemala two weeks prior, Obama was still the president. President Trump immediately changed the rules concerning immigration when he took office but Mercedes did not know about the rule changes. Throughout their first 2 weeks in America they were held in "the cage" as it was called. Later Juan was taken away and held with other kids. Shortly thereafter he was bussed to another location. Mercedes did not know where her son was taken and offered to return to Guatemala if she could get Juan back. However, she was told that it was too late. 

While this story was sad, it has its positive moments. Soon after arriving in the US, Juan discovers that he has supernatural powers. While living with an aunt he begins to learn how to control his power. When Juan finds out that his mother will be deported, his powers get out of control again and bring devastation to . . . I'm not going to tell you. If you haven't read this comic series yet, you need to get it ASAP. It is a great story.

Covid Chronicles

Covid Chronicles is an anthology of short comic strips by 65 cartoonists about the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is serious material and sometimes seemed to be too dark for my taste. However, it is important to have this snapshot of life in this pandemic for future generations. We read about working from home frivolity, teaching kids at home, relatives dying, empty grocery shelves and lots of drawings of people dead in their beds. The only other comic anthology that I can remember being similar to Covid Chronicles is A Fire Story edited by Brian Fies. It was also hard to read. A Fire Story was an anthology of comic strips about the Northern California wildfires in 2017. Both books are filled with overwhelming negative emotions that the reader needs to take a breather while reading them.

Stacking the Shelves #9

I am on vacation for the rest of October and wanted to pick up more historical novels by Edward Rutherford. His China was fabulous. Sadly, I could only find one of them at my local bookstore.  London is a wonderful 1,126 pages long and I am happy that I was able to get it.  The book is an epic saga of the city of London that spans 2,000 years, from the era of Julius Caesar to the 20th century. Many generations of six families are showcased here.

I also went to my public library and found several books that I have been waiting all year to be published.  Laura Childs' Twisted Tea Christmas is the latest installment of her Indigo Teashop Mysteries. S. D. Sykes' 5th book in her medieval mystery series is titled The Good Death.  The Widow Queen by Elzbieta Cherezinska gives us a historical look at Polish Queen Swietoslawa. It will be refreshing to read a historical novel that doesn't take place in the big three: England, France and Italy.  

Which one to start with?  The chunkster London.

One Night in Tehran

One Night in Tehran is the first book in Luana Ehrlich's Titus Ray spy thriller series. It was published i 2014 and now consists of 8 novels.  What makes this book different is that the main character is a new Christian.  While he tries to live the Christian lifestyle, the book has a spy thriller feel not a Christian fiction feel. 

The publisher's summary:

"Veteran CIA officer Titus Ray - on the run from the Iranian secret police - finds shelter with a group of Iranian Christians in Tehran. While urging him to become a believer in Jesus Christ, they manage to smuggle Titus out of Iran to freedom in Turkey.  Returning to the States, he discovers his Iranian mission failed because of political infighting within the Agency.  After Titus delivers a scathing indictment against the deputy director of operations, he's forced to take a year's medical leave in Oklahoma.  Before leaving Langley, Titus learns he's been targeted by a Hezbollah assassin hired by the Iranians.  Now, while trying to figure out what it means to be a follower of Christ, he must decide if the Iranian couple he meets in Norman, Oklahoma has ties to the man who's trying to kill him, and if Nikki Saxon can be trusted with his secrets.  Can a man trained to lie and deceive live a life of faith?  Should he trust the beautiful young detective with his secrets?  Was the bullet that killed his friend meant for him?"

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. There is a lot of suspense in each chapter that keeps you reading until you finish it and it certainly is a timely story.  I was expecting to see more domestic terrorism involved in the plot since it takes place in Oklahoma where the first act of domestic terrorism occurred in America. There is no link to that event though. Another aspect of the book that is different from most spy thrillers is that there is no sex or foul language. This is a clean, character driven story with awesome characters. Besides Titus, a former spook friend, Danny Jarrar, was able to leave the Agency and find a way to live the Christian life in Norman, Oklahoma. Also, the Oklahoma setting was interesting because there were so many Middle Eastern countries with operatives in the state.  I wonder whether this is true or was created by the author to bolster the spy story.  The part of the story that took place in Tehran was authentic too. 

While the main character is a Christian, this novel still reads like a daring spy thriller.  I highly recommend it to mystery fans.  5 out of 5 stars.

Parenthesis

Parenthesis is Elodie Durand's debut graphic novel. It is a memoir of five years of her life suffering from tumor induced epilepsy. The author changes her name, calling herself Judith, but it is her story and she wrote it ten years after it occurred. After finishing all her classes for a master's degree, Elodie only had her thesis to write. She began having momentary spells that continued to be spells of several minutes. Soon she was having multiple seizures daily that increased in length as well as period of recovery. She moved back in with her parents who eventually even had to dress her. Elodie had severe memory loss that lasted weeks. Her neurologist recommended her for gamma knife brain surgery which she underwent a few months later. However, she continued to get worse. There is a recovery but in my mind getting there was worse than the descent into darkness. Elodie had to deal with cerebral edema that comes with this type of surgery. 

The author does a great job of describing what life was like when she was barely conscious. I felt as though as I was there with her, something that I have not felt when reading stories of those who are dealing with cancer or paralysis. Her drawings also show the darkness of her memories from when she was barely awake. It is interesting that there was an awareness of something going on but she couldn't put her finger on what is was.  Elodie's story is moving, scary and gripping all at the same time. The choice of a title for the book is perfect: her normal life was interrupted by the opening of a parenthesis that she was not sure would ever close.  

5 out of 5 stars.

The Stationery Shop

The Stationery Shop is a sweet story that takes place in Tehran, California and Boston. The Khanom sisters, Roya and Zari, are coming of age in Tehran. They are quite different in their outlook on life. Roya is the heroine of the book and her story concentrates on the lost love of her first boyfriend, Bahman Aslan. 

Roya is a dreamy, idealistic seventeen-year-old living in 1953 Tehran. There is plenty of political upheaval as the Shah and the National Front fight for supremacy. Roya is not interested in politics and finds a literary oasis in the neighborhood stationery shop owned by Mr. Fakhri. There she finds pens, paper and Persian poetry books and she visits the shop every Tuesday afternoon when school is over. One day a cute boy comes in and is given a stack of papers to deliver by Mr. Fakhri.  Bahman Aslan catches Roya's heart even before they are introduced. Their romance blossoms under the watchful eye of Mr. Fakhri. A few months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square where violence erupts as a result of a coup d'erat that gives the Shah all of the power. In the packed crowd Roya does not see Bahman. She tries for several weeks to contact him but is not successful. In her grief Roya moves to California with her sister to attend college. There she meets Walter Archer. Roya and Walter marry and move to Boston so that Walter can attend law school. They live there and build a family. Sixty years after moving to America, Roya finds Bahman in a nursing home nearby her home where both of them meet and learn what ultimately happened earlier in their lives.

I love Middle Eastern novels.  Most of their traditions, and especially food, charm me. I loved reading how Mrs. Khanom prepared the Iranian traditional foods. It makes me want to visit an Iranian restaurant near my home and I probably will go there on the weekend. The closeness of the families in the novel is also heartwarming. It's too bad that this part of their culture did not transplant well in the U. S.

I felt sorry for Walter.  His wife could not show herself fully to him no matter how long they were married. He accepted her as she is. I also felt sorry for Roya because she could not get over her first love. We all have a first love that lives in our memory but most of us can move on.  I didn't understand why Roya couldn't. There must be something about her personality that prevents her from feeling fully. Zari is a secondary character and we see her as the complete opposite of her sister.  Zari has the ability to quickly recover from any downturns in her life. She sees people clearly but she is not bothered by them. 

The three settings, Tehran, California and Boston, did not seem all that important to the story. The only thing about the Tehran setting that moved me was the descriptions of the food and how they were made. I think, though, that family could be a setting here. It's the family binds that make this story touching. 

I loved this novel and am rating it 5 out of 5 stars.  It is recommended highly, primarily to women.

The End of October

The End of October is a medical thriller about a devastating virus that begins in Asia and soon thereafter goes global. This riveting story begins at in internment camp in Indonesia where forty seven people die from acute hemorrhagic fever. When microbiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization he suddenly learns that his driver is infected and is on his way to join millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Henry joins with a Saudi prince and doctor in an attempt to quarantine all of the pilgrims in the holy city.  It doesn't work.  The deputy director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is a Russian immigrant who scrambles to mount a response to what she thinks may be an act of biowar. Some people believe that the virus was bioengineered by Putin because there are few cases of it in Russia. The Russian leader, of course, blames the Americans. As the disease travels throughout the U. S. it decimates the population and religious, scientific and governmental institutions are dismantled. 

Obviously, this  novel is timely.  It was published in April 2020 so I doubt that the author had any idea that we would be dealing with a pandemic when he wrote the story. It is interesting to note that the president in the novel wears orange pancake makeup and the vice president will not make any decisions without praying first. To add to this phenomenon the main character worries about the danger his family could face while camping in off grid sites in Grand Teton National Park.

The sense of emergency contributed to the fast pace.  The reader does not know what the virus is or how fast it will kill people. Henry goes through a mental checklist to help him identify the origin of the virus and when it was revealed in the last 3 pages, I was astonished. I was not expecting this ending. Given all of my newfound knowledge on pandemics, I knew where the plot was heading. It was still a fantastic read. 4 out of 5 stars.