All The Ways We Said Goodbye by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White

Posted on by marjorieseidenfeld

Three women in three different time periods: Aurelie in 1914, Daisy in 1942, and Barbara (“Babs”) in 1964 – all connected through unknown ties at The Ritz in Paris. Each trying to survive the havoc that has been wreaked upon their lives because of war and keeping safe an heirloom that is thought to bring safety to France. Each trying to find her place in the world. And each finding that love wins out every time.

If you’ve read any of my posts, you know that I am a HUGE fan of Beatriz Williams’s books, and this older one of hers is no exception. While these characters are not quite as snarky as hers usually are, they are still sharp, kind, and utterly likable. We are caught up in each of their stories, puzzling how they’re connected, and rooting for them as they each battle their challenges. And as each story builds in tension, the switch to the alternate plot line serves to both relieve tension when it becomes taut. But switching also builds suspense, as we must wait further to learn the fate of our beloved characters. Nevertheless, the connections and the intersections gradually come to light, and we get the very satisfying “aha” moments we crave.

As usual, for this author – and her co-authors – this novel is masterfully constructed, artistically drawn, and hard to part with when it ends. Once again, I am in awe of her writing and can’t wait to read the next one!

The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post by Allison Pataki

Posted on by marjorieseidenfeld

Marjorie Post, daughter of the famous CW Post ,had a modest beginning. We meet her as she begins her trip to Battle Creek, MI, in the family’s quest to heal her ailing father. He’d been wasting from a severe depression and sought out the famed Dr. Kellog, to see if he might benefit from the diet, exercise, and fresh air treatment he was known to prescribe. Little did they know that the one who would heal him and be the most inspiring for him was their family’s hostess, who rented the rooms to Marjorie and her mother while CW received his tasteless treatments. She cooked him healthful meals and nursed him with her spiritual inspirations, enabling his soul to be revived. What lay ahead, both for CW and for Marjorie, was a growth of spirit and of creativity that would open their worlds to both unimaginable successes and tragic failures.

This historical fiction is based on the truly impressive and accomplished life of Marjorie Post, daughter of the famed CW Post, inventor of the breakfast cereal – Grape Nuts being the first! – and the founder of the General Foods Empire. Marjorie grew the business, creatively adding their many other types of foods and related products, finding ways in which to make a mother’s life more convenient, and hoping to provide nutritious foods to more families at a reasonable cost. She had an acute business acumen and would not give up on an idea once it worked its way into her brain, and she risked her reputation, her business, even her personal relationships when she knew she was onto something that might help others.

For this she paid a price, most often in her personal life, as many took advantage of her generous nature. Whether it was in her relationships- and she collected a few – or the press, who delighted in using her personal scandals as fodder for their gossip columns. But her true joy was her daughters, her work, and her volunteerism, which she threw herself into with gusto.

A little tidbit I learned from this also: she is the one who built the 126-roomed Mar-a-Lago. I have to confess, I had a hard time being excited to hear about the planning of its layout and the decoration of its rooms knowing who would be its future occupant, but I swallowed it in the name of history and fiction. I went with the spirit of the book. Marjorie was generous with her money, gave to many causes and was all in when times were rough for her country (unlike its current occupant) She was inspiring, actually (again, unlike the current occupant!).

If you are interested in historical fiction and want to know more about this very impressive woman, take a few days to peruse this novel. You’ll meet a lot of famous people, suffer a few heartbreaks along with her, and bask in her successes along with her as well.

 

The Glass Ocean by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White

Posted on by marjorieseidenfeld

Sarah has hit rock bottom. After her first success with Small Potatoes, she has hit a wall and has not found the next big idea for a similar blockbuster book. And the pressure is on, as she has her mother’s care to consider. What will she do?

Meanwhile, dialing back to 1915, we meet both Caroline and Tess. Caroline, graceful and talented, is married to a self-made man whom she loves but is finding to be unwilling to let her into his private and distracting business life. While they host a pre-departure soiree in their mansion in midtown Manhattan for all those leaving the next day on the luxurious Lusitania, she reunites with an old crush and wonders what will happen when they are all together on this journey. And Tess, from a different background altogether, cannot seem to stay in the shadows where she is seeking to acquire what she needs to deliver on her final undertaking for her sister and their “business.”. She just needs to do this one last job before she also boards the Lusitania and starts off in her new identity, her new life. The tensions are high for all of them as rumors of German U-boats abound… but surely the British naval ships will protect them, won’t they?

As you can easily see from my repeated Beatriz Williams book reviews, I love her writing. Full stop. She creates powerful female characters with depth, strong will, and acerbic wit – and this collaboration is no exception. All three main characters are like magnets, drawing us near, holding us to their stories, and keeping us wanting more.

The plot is written by these three characters’ stories as well. Each presents a different perspective which carries the story to the next level, taking it through its twists and turns, helping to build the suspense. And even though we all know the Lusitania is attacked by a German U-boat and sunk, the suspense is not jeopardized but rather enhanced by this; that is, we do not know exactly when or how it will happen, who will survive it, and how it will impact our characters in the end.

This is yet another wonderful historical fiction novel by one of my very favorite authors and her colleagues – I absolutely recommend it!

No Angel by Penny Vincenzi

Posted on by marjorieseidenfeld

When Celia focuses her attractive, intelligent gaze on a target, she essentially uses whatever means necessary to achieve it. So when she falls heavily in love for Oliver Lytton, even though he does not meet her parents’ ideal of whom she is to marry, she manages an underhanded way to force their approval. And when Oliver does not envision his wife as a working woman, she likewise convinces him that she is in fact essential to his publishing family business. As we follow Celia and Oliver through the first World War and see how it impacts their family and their business, we learn about life, about class, and about how compromise and understanding can heal a multitude of ills.

Once again, Penny Vincenzi has created a family, even a world, in which we are engrossed and enamored. Every one of the characters – and there are many with whom we become intimately familiar -is deeply rich, utterly imperfect, and so lovable that we care what happens to each and every one of them. These characters are taken through important moments in history during which they struggle and experience lasting impact. And there are moments of great tension, near-misses, and disappointments, when you cannot help but catch your breath or utter out loud.

There is also an important discussion of class here, that is raised sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly. When little Berty, the daughter of a poor, working class family is taken into Celia and Oliver’s family to be raised alongside their children, we are brought into her experience of feeling at home in neither family. Feeling over-privileged among her actual siblings, but treated like a foundling among her adoptive siblings, she is caught between these two worlds and is forced to navigate this tension starting at a very early age. She learns to use her intelligence and her kindness, and to find her allies early – and this serves her well, but she does suffer plenty along the way.

As each of the characters and each of the story lines come together, they wind around to enthrall and engage the reader just as in a perfectly choreographed dance. You want to know what happens but you never want it to end…

The perfect summer read!

The Secret Wife by Gill Paul

Posted on by marjorieseidenfeld

After stumbling upon her husband’s phone, left in full view with evidence of an affair, Kitty finds herself boarding a plane for the States without telling either her husband or her best friend – or anyone, for that matter – where she is headed. She just has to get away to sort out her thoughts and her next steps and fortunately, for her, she’s got a perfect place to do just that. Coincidentally, a few weeks prior, the papers came through confirming her inheritance of a cottage on a lake near Albany, NY, from a great grandfather she has known almost nothing about. As it turns out, while she sorts out her own situation, she also becomes curious to learn about her great grandfather, Dmitri, the prior owner of this cottage. Why has she never heard about him? Why did she not know there was another writer in the family? And from whom is this very expensive Faberge pendant she’s found in the cottage? As she pieces together the mystery of her great grandfather’s past, she finds she also learns quite a bit more about herself.

By pivoting between Kitty’s story and that of Dmitri’s, we learn about what did happen and what could have been. Dmitri’s story begins in 1914 at the start of the Russian revolution when he is first injured and is tended to by one of the Tsar’s daughters, Tatiana. The original historical legend is a horror. This one has its horrific moments as well, for sure, but the author also intermixes it with love, hope and much imagination.

There are a few themes that resonated throughout the narrative and over which I struggled. One was that of loyalty and the other was forgiveness. Kitty is crushed by her husband’s failure of loyalty, and evades and then contemplates a path to forgiveness. Likewise, Dmitri is fiercely loyal to Tatiana, but when he finds another love who lifts his spirits when he believes he is lost, his loyalty to his new family is questioned by others. Some forgive and others cannot – and this impact lasts for generations. What this story highlights to a dramatic degree is that things may not be as they appear to be. While we think we know someone, their circumstances, their history – we may know nothing at all about what is going on inside their heads or their hearts, their truth.The only genuine path to forgiveness is to hear someone out, to give an opportunity for them to voice their truth. To get there, that requires having an open heart to what they have to say – and that may or may not be achievable.

This is why I believe reading is crucial. If we read and take in what we read, we, in turn, open our hearts and minds to other ideas. This is what makes us more human, more compassionate. We understand others’ perspectives, others’ voices. I have a long way to go yet, but this is one of the ways in which I strive to grow and move forward.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Posted on by marjorieseidenfeld

The dust has barely settled and wounds have certainly not yet healed from the second world war when Charlotte finds herself dragged by her mother across the Atlantic on the way to take care of her “Little Problem” in a clinic in Switzerland. While her mother is determined to erase this “stain” on Charlotte’s reputation, Charlotte has a very different mission in mind. While here in Europe, she sees an opportunity to uncover the whereabouts of her beloved cousin Rose, who has been missing and presumed dead since returning to France just before the German occupation. With the name and address of Eve Gardiner which she has scribbled on a small piece of paper, she unlocks an adventure that leads her to discovering much more than just what happened to Rose. She discovers a network of brave women who risked their lives for their countries and she uncovers her own inner strength as well.

The Alice Network is another suspenseful novel by the author of the Rose Code (see my prior entry), which will similarly have you on the edge of your seat as you turn each page. There is a great deal of historical fact woven into the fiction here, as Quinn celebrates the unsung female heroes of the first and second world wars.  We learn of the undercover spies that wore skirts and makeup instead of slacks and blazers. They were often ignored because they were “just women,” which sometimes enabled them to sneak through borders undetected, but sometimes led to them being ignored even when they carried valuable information that might have saved hundreds of lives. 

The writing here is crisp, acerbic and intricately plotted. We float back and forth between Charlotte’s pursuit in 1947 and Eve’s back story (WW I). The characters are, each of them, hardened and broken, wounded in one way or another by war. When we meet Eve, for example, she is in a drunken rage, threatening Charlotte with a Luger in her face and trying to send her away.  She is emotionally and physically crippled by her experience in her war.  We see so starkly how women were affected by our wars – whether working under cover, nursing, or being on the front lines in other ways – and their wounds are obviously just as deep. 

I highly recommend this novel – it is historical fiction at its best.