Nevermore 10-20-26 Reported by Rita
The Wartime Journal of a Georgia Girl, 1864-1865 by Eliza
Frances Andrews
In the fall of 1864 General Sherman and his army cut a ruinous
swath across Georgia, and outraged Southerners steeled themselves for defeat. Threatened
by the approach of the Union army, young Eliza Frances Andrews and her sister
Metta fled from their home in Washington, Georgia, to comparative safety in the
southwestern part of the state. The daughter of a prominent judge who
disapproved of secession, Eliza kept a diary that fully registers the anger and
despair of Confederate citizens during the last months of the Civil War.
Traveling across Georgia, Eliza observes Sherman's devastation. A lively social
life is maintained at her eldest sister's plantation, where she and Metta take
refuge, but Eliza's sense of doom is clear. Rumors are rife-the fall of
Richmond, the surrender of General Lee, the imminent approach of the Yankees.
On returning to the family home, she sees the Old South crumble before her
eyes.
It was striking how challenging travel could be at that time.
It was a very interesting story and eye-opening. -CD 5 stars
The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
In 1933 Oxford, Mississippi, Prohibition is on the wane, and
the Great Depression is tightening its grip. Poor and rich folks alike have
fallen on hard times, even as the old social order remains. For women on the
margins, the options are few and the price of dignity and self-determination is
unbearably high. Eleven-year-old Meg, one of the unadoptable “big girls” at the
Lafayette County Orphan Asylum, fights each day to keep her spirit unbowed.
Birdie, unmarried and outspoken, has come to Oxford on a mission to ask her
social-climbing sister to help the struggling family she’s left behind. And
Charlie is a woman with a past, running low on luck but driven by fire, fury,
and grit. When their fates converge, they come up with an audacious plan to
take back control of their lives. Together, they form an unlikely sisterhood--but
in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, women’s freedom is fragile, and
making an enemy can have dire consequences, will the price they pay for their
outrageous risk-taking be too high?
This book was fun and funny. What a ride! -VC 4 stars
Partita by Barbara Kingsolver
Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest
livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call
from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as
Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family,
uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an
extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s
kept at bay for a lifetime. Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision
to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories
framed as musical dances, the traumas of childhood loss, abandonment,
self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief
in love and ruptured the course of her life.
This was a really good book. I learned a lot about music. -CW 4 stars
Other Books Mentioned
Our Brains, Our Selves by Masud
Husain
Letters Home - A Collection of Original Civil War
Soldiers' Letters / Antietam - Gettysburg - Chancellorsville - From
the Collection of Alan Sessarego
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women
Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott
Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
Cavedweller by Dorothy Allison
Under the Dome by Stephen King
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran
Desai
Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman
Come From Away by Genevieve Graham
The Day the World Came to Town by Jim
DeFede
The Daisy Chain Flower Shop by
Laurie Gilmore
Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily
Krempholtz
New Books
Agrippa: A Novel of Ancient Rome's Descent into
Dictatorship by Robert Harris
Hiroshima, 8:15: The Lost Memoir by
Kiyoshi Tanimoto
10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People: A
Groundbreaking Approach to Leading the Next Generation--And Making Your Own
Life Easier by David Yeager
The Memory Bookshop by Song Yu-jeong
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