Patty Pick for 03/15/18 is "Redemption Road" by John Hart

John Hart became one of my favorite authors when I read his first book, "The King of Lies". He had my attention and the fact that he is a North Carolina author kept my attention. I couldn't wait to see if his next book lived up to the first, and it did. Now I cannot wait to read his new book, "The Hush" which came out February 27, 2018. 

Recently I read “Redemption Road”. The story is centered around the two main characters, this time a woman and a man. Elizabeth Black, a police officer on the brink of losing her career and maybe her freedom is fighting for both when her ex-partner, Adrian Wall, walks out of prison a free man. They have a very complicated history. Adrian, out of prison after serving a thirteen year sentence, left a  prison ran by a very corrupt warden and his staff. They are not ready to leave Adrian alone to tell tales. 

Elizabeth likes to rescue children at risk. She feels that her parents let her down and she wants to help the ones she can save. She is trying to save Gideon, a local child, whose mother has died when she is pulled into the kidnapping of Channing Shore. Channing, the rich daughter of a powerful local family, was kidnapped and tortured. Elizabeth saves Channing and their relationship develops throughout the story. The characters interweave their stories and leave you, the reader wanting to know more.  

This book is filled with rich, full characters that will draw you in or make you want to run as far as possible from them as you can go. Oh, by the way, there is a serial killer in the town looking for his next young woman victim. The characters will be trying to decipher the answer to what is going on in different ways and their reactions will guide them in their interactions with each other. It will keep you guessing what is coming on the next page and leave you reading as quickly as possible until the last word. If you take away anything from a John Hart novel, it is the thirst for more of his writing and you will remember them for a long time. A resounding 5 Stars! 

Patty Pick for 2/8/17 is "The Woman in the Window" by AJ Finn

I had heard and read very good press about this book, but as you all know sometimes a book may not live up to it's hype. "The Woman in the Window" will grab you by the heart and proceed to squeeze it with fear until you can't take it any longer. Then it proceeds to pluck those same heartstrings and make you cry.

Anna Fox, renown child psychologist, can not leave her home due to the agoraphobia she now suffers. She is doing therapy, taking medication, talking to her family, anything and everything to help her find the courage to leave. In the meantime, she spends her days watching the neighbors through the windows of her home. She is watching the vacant house across the park when a new family moves in with a teenage son. She did not know she would soon put herself in their cross hairs.

Anna slowly unravels her story to you when she communicates with her tenant living in her basement, shares her wine with the neighbors, participates in her computer community and interacts with the few people she allows into her house. But don't think this is a slow, winding read, because that could not be further from the truth. This "woman in the window" will grab you and twist and turn you until you are not sure who is alive, dead, or guilty. I don't want to give too much away, but there are surprising twists and turns and the finale kept me reading it so I could finish it during the first quarter of the Super Bowl. I could not put it down! You need to meet Anna and live with her a few days or however long it takes you to read this book. Believe me, you will not want to put it down until you are finished! 5++++ Stars! 

The Girl without a Name by Sandra Block

Zoe Goldman is at it again. She is being drawn into the mystery of one of her patients and doing things she shouldn't to uncover the girl's identity. In "The Girl Without A Name", the patient, Jane Doe, does not know who she is or what she was doing when the police found her. She only remembers chasing a car. The authorities take Jane Doe to the hospital and the search for her identity begins. Zoe is tasked to help Jane Doe solve the mystery of her identity. Zoe, with her  coworker Jason and her new attending boss Dr. Berringer, works as an intern on the psych floor of the Childrens Hospital in Buffalo NY.

Her boyfriend is an Emergency Room Doctor who is ready to take the next step in his career. While Tom and she are working out their future, Zoe's old flame is texting her his doubts about marrying the woman he dumped Zoe for. All of this is distracting her from studying for the exam that will make her a doctor. She flunked it once when she was attacked by a different patient, who turned out to be her sister. The sister who killed her birth mother. With the fact that her step mom has recently succumbed to Alzheimer's disease, poor Zoe has been having a rough time in her life lately.

Jane Doe presents a mystery that captures her interest and Zoe can't help herself from trying to figure out who she is. The staff call her Candy, Jane Doe's gentle personality. 
Then Candy turns into Daneesha. Daneesha is a tough, firebrand who takes no prisoners and refuses to take the meds they prescribe. Neither identity can remember what happened to her or who she is. When for no reason Candy returns to her catatonic state, Zoe realizes time is running out to find out who she is.

I love Zoe Goldman, a complicated but endearing woman who struggles with her own self doubts and anxiety. In the end, she must rely on her instincts with the help of her detective friend to find the answers, but will it be in time to help Candy/Daneesha? 
Loved this one as much as the first in the series and looking forward to the third, "The Secret Room", which was published in April of  2017! A solid 4.5 Stars!!

The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash

Earlier this year, I impatiently looked forward to the next novel by Wiley Cash. So you can imagine my excitement to hear that he would be the keynote speaker at the NC Writers Network 2017 Fall Conference. The fact that his next book would be published right before the conference made it even more of a reason not to miss his keynote address. I really enjoyed the conference, learned a lot, and met some amazing writers. I ordered "The Last Ballad" from my local bookstore, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest. We all need to support our local bookstores. They are so valuable and important to our communities. Wiley Cash was kind enough to sign it and I was thrilled to hear his address to the conference, a win-win. 

The novel portrays the life of Ella Mae Wiggins based on true accounts of her life. Ella Mae was a special woman who was ahead of her time. She fought for many rights including the right to be home with her children when they were sick and to make a fair wage in her job at the local mill. She was not a radical communist as some parts of society portrayed her at the time of the Loray Mill strike which took place in Gastonia, North Carolina in 1929. The fact that I, a native North Carolinian, have never heard of this strike and social unrest in the early 1900's seems unbelievable to me. No state likes to advertise their messy history, so these type of events seem to be swept under the table of history and not widely discussed.

Ella Mae was a poor young woman working in Tennessee with her parents when they both died and left her with no one at the age of 16. With a small amount of money in her pocket, she drew the interest of a swindler who took her money and her virginity. After she became pregnant they moved to find work at the textile mills in South Carolina. Struggling with her loss and uneducated she found work in several mills, but was left alone to provide for herself and her children. Living in a shack, working 70 hours a week at her job, she took a chance and went to hear a union organizer. From there she would become one of the most influential people in the struggle to organize the workers, both white and black. She wrote and performed songs, organized her fellow workers and attended rallies. The mill owners and their minions did not like the largely Northern group of union organizers who came down South to stir up trouble and they fought hard to put down the organizer's ideas by using fists, clubs, guns and other ruthless tactics. 

Ella Mae's story, while true, is a fictional account written by the wonderful storyteller, Wiley Cash. His novel, as usual, provide a vivid picture of life in North Carolina when this was taking place. You can feel Ella Mae's pain and we mourn along with her losses. You can't go wrong reading any of Wiley Cash's books. The stories they tell and characters you meet will stay with you long after the last page is turned. A solid 5 stars!  

Patty Pick for 3/2/17 is "Hillbilly Elegy" by JD Vance

I had read a lot about this book on different forums and it was high on my to-read list. At our annual Book Club dinner in December we do a book exchange, and after much finagling I was able to "steal" away with this book! Yeah! Of course, one of the first things I had to do was look up the word, elegy. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, "elegy" is defined as "a sad poem or song, a poem or song that expresses sorrow for someone who is dead." Not to assume what JD Vance, meant by his title, but he definitely seems to be singing the blues where his hillbilly heritage is concerned. The sad fact that some of them make it out of the poverty-stricken Kentucky area that where they grew up, but they continue to struggle to find their way. The system and society are not set up to help them in many ways. People are not looking for handouts - someone to do it for them, but they are looking for a hand to make the transition plain to them, a pathway to make the hard work they put into this life a little better for the next generation. 

What I thought I would be reading was his childhood and how he made it out of poverty to become a successful something in life - author? He did become a successful Harvard-educated lawyer. What I did not expect is the harsh realities of his childhood and the struggle of his family to maintain and take advantage of the opportunities they worked hard to obtain. What I did not expect was to read some of the very same examples that I have in my own family to some degree. What I did not expect was to relate to the reality of the effects of your family life has on future generations. What I did get was a wonderful dose of Southern family life in the rawest possible form. I did read harsh situations that he and his family found themselves in, many after "making" it out of one of the poorest areas in the South. What I did find was some of my own family's stories woven into his book. If you are from the South, you will get this easily.

The South is a unique place in this world and I would not trade being born and growing up
here for anything in this world. I thought my family was always middle-class until I went
to high school and then saw some of my friend's homes and how they lived. I did not know
all the society niceties that I wished I had been taught, and my family sometimes struggled. I did watch my sister turn from a smart, kind person into someone who lost her way. Was it in her genes? I don't know, but I do know that we are all influenced by our family - our wonderful, loving, dysfunctional family. And we all have one - that took 

years for me to figure out. We all have the crazy uncle who throws snakes out of the yard 

and across the road to rid the yard of the huge creature. We also have memories to cherish, like those warm, bright Sunday afternoons at our grandma's house, making homemade ice cream with the aunts, uncles and cousins.  

I loved my childhood. I had two of the most wonderful parents ever to walk on this earth. Sure we could have used more money and I wanted more "things" at some years in my steps on adulthood, but I was loved and well taken care of. JD Vance had to fend for himself and deal with a no-nonsense, gun-toting grandma and a drug addict mother, but he made it. He also had some wonderful people around him, his sister for one. They became a tight team that just kept each other together when they needed to.

Success is what you decide it is and sometimes it is hard to comes to term with your own
family. But you only get one and you better cherish those moments while you have them.
Maybe JD didn't have a lot of money but the story of his life to this point is inspiring and
sad at the same time. There are people out there who still struggle to find their way.
It took me years to have any self-confidence and all most 40 years to start writing again. Be proud of yourself and embrace the kooky and calm members of your family - you only
get one family. They can all teach you something  and they are all irreplaceable in this world.

Don't walk to the bookstore or your on-line portal, RUN for this book. A big, huge READ!!

Best Books I Read in 2017 & Books I Can't Wait to Read in 2018!

The following are some of the best books I read in 2017. They are from different genres and authors. They are by no means a complete list. The books that I have on my list for 2018 are also a small faction of the ones I want to read. But what I want to read and actually have time to read are always two different things. Here's wishing you all the best reading year in 2018 and let me know which ones you read and how you like them. 
Happy New Year! And be Present in your life. 

2017
The Blackbird Season by Kate Moretti
The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
If the Creek Don't Rise by Leah Weiss
Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda
Redemption Road by John Hart
The Orphan's Tale by Pam Jenoff
Little Black Lies by Sandra Block
The Choices We Make by Karma Brown
Flight Patterns by Karen White
When We Were Sisters by Emilie Richards
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance
Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

2018
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
The Woman in the Window by AJ Finn
The Optimist's Guide to Letting Go by Amy E Reichert
Daughters of the Night Sky by Aimie K Runyan
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
The Glass Forest by Cynthia Swanson
No Place I'd Rather Be by Cathy Lamb
Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly
The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Still Me by Jojo Moyes
Sunburn by Laura Lippman
All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson

My One Word Resolution for 2018 is Present!

To be Present in my life may seem like a no-brainer for a resolution, but I know from

a lot of personal experience that we often let everything get in the way of our enjoyment of our life. So while I will probably struggle sometimes to let myself enjoy everything, I am going to try my best to really be present in the moment and live every minute of my life to the fullest in 2018. My life is pretty awesome, so why I let things that I cannot control ruin it for me, is beyond my comprehension anyway. 

Worry is my middle name. I can let it ruin parts and too often the whole day. I can think, analyze, dissect, and thoroughly pull apart certain aspects of my day and life while  totally overthinking the situation. This will lead me to worry about the things that I have no control over and miss pieces of my life that are wonderful and memorable. I know that's such a trite thing to say - Be Present in the Moments of Your life! David Thoreau had it right, 

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
Henry David Thoreau

And even though I will probably struggle with this resolution, I am determined to try. And to try something with your whole being, is really all you can do in life. Be present, try your best,  and oft times we reach the prize we were aiming for. My goals are to relish the ride, finish my manuscript, publish a short story, love my family and by all means - enjoy the Present! And while I didn't meet my goals for this year, that's okay. Look at what I did accomplish this year and going forward I will enjoy every minute of my life and my time with those that I love.  

What is your resolution? Do you make a resolution/goal for the next year? Look forward to hearing from some of you and to hearing your goals and/or resolutions. Happy New Year!

Let's make 2018 a wonderful year with lots of family, love, being present and books!