After reading Aftermirth, I wanted a book I could enjoy without raising questions I was not ready to answer. A Harvest of Secrets by Roland Merullo was set in Italy in 1943. The terror seeds planted by Hitler brought Allied forces to Italian soil. Young lovers separated by war—one near a Tuscan hill town, the other a soldier on the Sicilian front—will meet any challenge to reunite. Historical fiction is a genre I enjoy. Will this book fulfill my needs? The answer is yes.

The web of secrets that are harvested kept me on my toes. Usually, the surprises of a novel are ones that I know even before finishing the book. At least one of the secrets did surprise me.

I also found the background of the war and loyalty to Il Duce a reminder that blind loyalty to a leader can destroy a nation.

I recommend this book.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview.

Vittoria SanAntonio, the daughter of a prosperous vineyard owner, is caught in a web of family secrets. Defying her domineering father, she has fallen for humble vineyard keeper Carlo Conte. When Carlo is conscripted into Mussolini’s army, it sets a fire in Vittoria, and she joins the resistance. As the Nazi war machine encroaches, Vittoria is drawn into dangers as unknowable as those faced by the man she loves.

Badly wounded on the first day of the invasion, Carlo regains consciousness on a farm in Sicily. Nursed back to health by a kind family there, he embarks on an arduous journey north through his ravaged homeland. For Carlo and Vittoria, as wartime threats mount and their paths diverge, what lies ahead will test their courage as never before.

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Today, I started reading Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell, one of The New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary, voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins treating him for a rare species of brain parasite.

The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, the West Coast in the 1970s, an inglorious present-day England, a Korean superstate of the near future where neo-capitalism has run amok, and, finally, a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. What sets Cloud Atlas apart is its unique narrative structure, which boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. This journey reveals how the disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon. The novel’s diverse settings and cultures, from 1850 Chatham Isles to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii, appeal to readers across the globe, offering a rich and varied reading experience.

Today, I started reading Mercury: A Novel about a roofing family. The family’s bond of loyalty is tested when they uncover a long-hidden secret at the heart of their blue-collar town. The book is written by Amy Jo Burns, the author of the critically acclaimed novel Shiner, which I read and enjoyed in 2022. I highly recommend it.

The story is set in 1990, and it follows the journey of a seventeen-year-old girl named Marley West, who arrives in the river valley town of Mercury, Pennsylvania. She is a loner who is looking for a place to belong. The first thing she sees when she gets to town is three men standing on a rooftop, and they soon become her whole world.

Marley becomes a young wife to one of the Joseph brothers, The One Who Got Away to another, and an adopted mother to all of them. Marley guides these unruly men as their mother fades away and their roofing business crumbles under the weight of their unwieldy father’s inflated ego. Years later, an eerie discovery in the church attic causes old wounds to resurface, and suddenly, the family’s survival hangs in the balance.

With Marley as their guide, the Joseph brothers must decide whether they can save the family they’ve always known or build something more substantial in its place.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding gifts made this month, I will match dollar for dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Tonight I read Zenith Man by Jennifer Haigh. A 911 call begins the story. A man reports his wife had died, but no one knew he had a wife. For thirty-two years, they had been married, and only one person had seen her, but only for a minute when she said: “supper was ready.” I read the first page and immediately found myself with a short page-turner that I could not stop reading. I recommend Zenith Man.

Actual events inspired this story. For many decades, many acquaintances of Jan and mine had no idea we were married. Once they found out, the response was, “we should have known as the two of you are perfect for each other.” But they knew we were married and had met both of us.

Being a widow, I found this phrase in the story emotional and very moving.

“She was a good woman,” Harold told Cob Krug. “I was lucky to have her. I promised to keep her in sickness and in health, and that’s what I did.”

Is there anything more that can summarize the love between two people?

I highly recommend Zenith Man, part of Inheritance, a collection of five stories about secrets, unspoken desires, and dangerous revelations between loved ones. Each Inheritance piece can be read or listened to in a single setting. By yourself, behind closed doors, or shared with someone you trust. Zenith Man is the fourth one in the series I have read. The previous three were Everything My Mother Taught Me, Can You Feel This?, and The Lion’s Den.

I have enjoyed all four and look forward to reading the final one.

Now that I have read Ms. Haigh’s short story, I have added her newest novel, Mercy Street, to my queue.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

Whatever had been going on inside the shuttered old house, the couple who lived there kept it to themselves. Among the locals, there’s only chilling speculation.

Neighbors are shocked when Harold Pardee reports his wife dead. No one even knew the eccentric TV repairman was married. Within hours, horrible rumors spread about what that poor woman must have endured for thirty years. Until the Pardees’ carefully guarded world is exposed. New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh delivers an endearing short story about our misguided perception of strangers, the nature of love, and the need for secrets.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Nobody Gets Out Alive: Stories by Leigh Newman, set in Newman’s home state of Alaska and an exciting virtuosic story collection about women navigating the wilds of a male-dominated society. Nobody Gets Out Alive is a collection of dazzling, courageous stories about women struggling to survive, not just grizzly bears and charging moose but the raw, exhausting legacy of their marriages and families.

There are moments when characters in a story leap off the page and become, for a few moments, our soul mates. Ms. Newman, in each of these memorable stories, engages so fully that each character becomes so alive that I wanted to know more about their lives.

The stores span both the recent past and the founding of Anchorage. I found all of them to be stories I would happily read again. The recent stories highlight the common desire for a freer, more inclusive world for women. A woman forced to sell her home or a new bride testing limits on her return home resonates as themes of the modern world.

The final story is set in 1915 in a railroad camp. The story highlights the founding of Anchorage. As one who likes historical fiction, I was so engaged that I could not take a break. I was not expecting the outspoken heiress would stage an elaborate theatrical to seduce the wife of her husband’s employer.

I may never visit Alaska at my age, but I now know enough to feel I have lived in Seward’s Folly.

I decided to read this book after reading Ms. Newman wrote a review of The Faraway World. Ms. Newman is a skilled writer, and I highly recommend this collection and look forward to reading more of her stories in the future.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

In “Howl Palace”—winner of The Paris Review’s Terry Southern Prize, a Best American Short Story, and Pushcart Prize selection—an aging widow struggles with a rogue hunting dog and the memories of her five ex-husbands while selling her house after bankruptcy. In the title story, “Nobody Gets Out Alive,” newly married Katrina visits her hometown of Anchorage. She blows up her wedding reception by flirting with the host and running off with an enormous mastodon tusk.

Alongside stories set in today’s Last Frontier—rife with suburban sprawl, global warming, and opioid addiction—Newman delves into the remote wilderness of the 1970s and 80s, bringing to life young girls and single moms in search of a wilder, more accessible, more adventurous America. The final story takes place in a railroad camp in 1915, where an outspoken heiress stages an elaborate theatrical to seduce the wife of her husband’s employer, revealing how this masterful storyteller is “not only writing unforgettable, brilliantly complex characters, she’s somehow inventing souls” (Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light).

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. Although many reviewers highly rated this book, I was unsure it was the book for me. However, once I started reading, I could not stop. It is “a striking and surprising debut novel from a compelling new voice. Such a Fun Age is a big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young Black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains’ toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store’s security guard, seeing a young Black woman out late with a White child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make things right.

But Emira herself is aimless, broke, and wary of Alix’s desire to help. At 25, she is about to lose her health insurance and has no idea what to do with her life. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves and each other.

With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Ageexplores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family”, and the complicated reality of being a grown-up. It is a searing debut for our times.

When race and privilege are paramount issues, this book is a first step to understanding the intersectionality of the issues and addressing them. I recommend this book with our reservation.

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