Nevermore: Lisette's List, Blood on Snow, A Land Remembered, Vanished

Reported by Jeanne

First up in Nevermore was Lisette’s List by Susan Vreeland.  The story begins in 1937, when young bride Lisette has to move from her beloved Paris to a tiny village in Provence in order to take care of her husband’s grandfather, Pascal.  She finds compensation in hearing Pascal’s stories of the great artists:  he had been a pigment salesman and knew artists such as Pizarro and Cezanne who had gifted him with paintings. Then World War II begins, and Lisette’s world is again turned upside down as the Nazis invade.  Our reader proclaimed it to be an excellent novel, especially for those interested in art, but with a wide ranging appeal.

The next book was A Land Remembered by Patrick Smith, another historical novel but this one begins in 1858 in Florida when Tobias McIvey decides to start on new life on the frontier.  The novel follows several generations of the McIvey family as they struggle through hardships to become wealthy and influential.  The book covers a century of Florida history and has won numerous awards since its publication in 1984.  Our reader especially appreciated the attention to environmental detail.

Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbo centers on Olav, a hitman who is hired to take out a special target—the crime boss’s wife.  Olav knows it’s a very dangerous assignment from the start, as he will likely be eliminated by someone else because he knows too much.  Once he started shadowing his victim, another complication surfaces: he falls in love with her.  Our reader said Blood on Snow was very different from Nesbo’s usual work, almost poetic.  He loved it.

Nonfiction was well represented with Vanished by Wil Hylton. In 1944, a B-24 went down near the island of Palau in the Pacific with eleven crew members.  Despite the large size of the plane, the wreckage was never found.  Sixty years later, Dr. Pat Scanlon, a diver with an interest in locating WW II planes, took up the challenge to find out what became of the plane and crew. Our reader said it was interesting and noted that she read it for the mystery and not its literary quality.