Today, I delved into the gripping pages of "All the Sinners Bleed" by S. A. Cosby. This enthralling novel centers around Titus Crown, the first African American sheriff in Charon County, Virginia. Despite the county's reputation for traditional customs such as moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, Titus, with his FBI expertise, knows that the peace won't last forever.
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by S. A. Cosby
Today, I delved into the gripping pages of “All the Sinners Bleed” by S. A. Cosby. This enthralling novel centers around Titus Crown, the first African American sheriff in Charon County, Virginia. Despite the county’s reputation for traditional customs such as moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, Titus, with his FBI expertise, knows that the peace won’t last forever.
On the first anniversary of Titus’s election, a schoolteacher is murdered by an ex-student, and Titus’s deputies take down the perpetrator. As Titus delves deeper into the case, he uncovers a web of horrendous crimes and finds a serial killer lurking in plain sight, haunting Charon’s dirt roads and woodland clearings.
Titus is determined to solve the case, even though it is linked to a nearby church, and he harbors a personal secret that plagues him. However, he faces opposition from a far-right group who want to hold a parade to honor the town’s Confederate past while he tries to solve the issue.
Despite the challenges, Titus remains resolute in his love for Charon and his commitment to finding justice. The collision of religion and hatred cannot deter him from his duty.
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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by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is often referred to as a children’s book. I read it as a child and later read it to my children. After Jan died, I picked it up again and read it more than once.
I have found quotes from the book very helpful during my grief journey. These are three that I often use in my writing and my conversations with friends and family.
The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”
You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.”
The first quote about beautiful things only felt in the heart summarizes how I knew Jan was the one for me within seconds of meeting her.
For those who have not read the book, this overview might help convince you to read it today!
The Little Prince describes his journey from planet to planet, each tiny world populated by a single adult. It’s a wonderfully inventive sequence that evokes the great fairy tales and monuments of postmodern whimsy. The author pokes similar fun at a business person, a geographer, and a lamplighter, all of whom signify some futile aspect of adult existence.
The Little Prince will be by my bedside as long as I live!
by Sally Rooney
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, a writer recommended to me, but I have always kept them on the to-read list, not the current reading. Does a beautiful word exist? Is it possible to live in a beautiful world despite the loss of the love of my life? Perhaps reading a Beautiful World, Where Are You will help me on my grief journey.
Ms. Rooney’s book was a page-turner, and I highly recommend it.
One of the quotes from the book echoed my dream of a beautiful world.
“When I try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn’t changed very much since I was a child – a house with flowers and trees around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that’s all. Just to make a home there, and to care for my parents when they grow older. Never to move, never to board a plane again, just to live quietly and then be buried in the earth.” ― Beautiful World, Where Are You
It also helped remind me how unique and memorable was the love that Jan and I shared. We could quickly fall into a life lived separately as friends, or we might not have ever fallen in love and married.
As Beautiful World, Where Are You, wrote:
“If God wanted me to give you up, he wouldn’t have made me who I am.”
The Goodreads summary provides an overview.
Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a breakup and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, and they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, and they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
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by Kristin Hannah
I started reading “The Women: A Novel” by Kristin Hannah today. This book is written by the same author who wrote “The Nightingale” and “The Four Winds.” “The Women” is a story set in a difficult time, depicting a woman’s coming-of-age journey and an epic tale of a divided nation. It highlights that women can be heroes, too.
When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation to her. She was raised in Southern California’s sun-drenched, idyllic world and was sheltered by her conservative parents. She has always prided herself on doing the right thing. However, in 1965, the world is changing, and Frankie suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she decides to join the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
Frankie, who is as inexperienced as the young men sent to fight in Vietnam, is struggling to cope with the chaos and destruction of war. Every day is a life-or-death gamble that can be filled with hope, betrayal, and shattered friendships. In this brutal reality, she encounters and becomes one of the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.
War is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The actual battle awaits when they return home to a divided and changing America, met by angry protesters and a nation wanting to forget Vietnam.
“The Women” is a novel that tells the story of a woman who goes to war. Still, its purpose is to bring attention to all the women who have put themselves in danger for their country and whose sacrifice and dedication have often been overlooked. The book is about solid friendships and patriotism, and it portrays a brave and idealistic heroine whose courage in times of war will become a defining moment in history.
by Claire Keegan
Today, I read “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan, one of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, and the seventeenth book I have read from that list. “Small Things Like These” is award-winning author Claire Keegan‘s landmark new novel, a tale of one man’s courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family.
The story is set in 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man, faces his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery that forces him to confront his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.
I found this short but well-written novel very impactful. The following quote explains the powerful impact of the need for meaning and purpose in our lives as Furlong walks in the snow after taking action after bringing home a young girl from a Magdalen laundry. How often can we ignore the small things like these and still look ourselves in the mirror?
“As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without once being brave enough to go against what was there and yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?”
As an international bestseller, ‘Small Things Like These‘ is a profoundly moving story of hope and quiet heroism. It’s a narrative that will make you admire the characters and stir your empathy, all crafted by one of our most critically acclaimed and iconic writers. The characters in the story are so relatable that you will feel understood and deeply invested in their journey.
by Tana French
Today, I began reading “The Hunter: A Novel” by Tana French, often called the Queen of Irish crime fiction. The story takes place in a small village in the West of Ireland during a hot summer. Two men arrive, one returning home and the other seeking riches. However, one of them is also seeking death.
Cal Hooper is a retired Chicago police officer who moved to rural Ireland for a peaceful life. He has built a relationship with a local woman named Lena and has been mentoring Trey Reddy, a troubled teenager on a better path. But when Trey’s long-lost father returns, accompanied by an English millionaire and a plan to find gold in the townland, everything they have built is threatened. Cal and Lena are willing to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey is not interested in protection. What she wants is revenge.
This novel, written by the acclaimed author described by The New York Times as “in a class by herself,” tells a nuanced and atmospheric tale about what we are willing to do for our loved ones, what we will do for revenge, and what we may have to sacrifice when the two collide.
by Jhumpa Lahiri
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri is an incredible book. Each short story is a page-turner that I will re-read many times. As Ms. Lahiri writes, “The question of identity is always a difficult one, but especially so for those who are culturally displaced, as immigrants are, or those who grow up in two worlds simultaneously, as is the case for their children.”
Since 2000, Interpreter of Maladies has been on my reading list. For what is a writer, if not an interpreter of maladies? Perhaps, I waited until now so that I would have grief to help guide me thru this collection of short stories. I highly recommend Interpreter of Maladies.
The Goodreads summary provides a concise overview.
Navigating between the Indian traditions they’ve inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In “A Temporary Matter,” published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth. At the same time, their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant.
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