Contact US!
Have a question? Suggestion?
Subscribe to Sharing Jan's Love Newsletter!
by Amy Jo Burns
Shiner: A Novel by Amy Jo Burns was my twenty-second of the year, and I achieved my Goodreads 2022 Reading Challenge. An hour from the closest West Virginia mining town, fifteen-year-old Wren Bird lives in a secluded mountain cabin with her parents. They have no car, mailbox, or visitors- except for her mother’s lifelong best friend.
Wren’s narration of her discoveries of the secrets of the past over one summer drives the novel and makes it a page-turner. Her mother, Ruby, and her best friend, Ivy, are two strong women who dreamed of escaping the West Virginia mountains. The male characters play secondary roles in the novel, as they should. Shiner is a feminist book about how women can and must take back their stories and lives from men whose power is an illusion.
I highly recommend this novel and look forward to reading other books by Amy Jo Burns. It was the perfect book to finish my reading challenge. As I continue to read this year, I hope to find another of her books on my shelf.
Goodreads provides an overview.
Every Sunday, Wren’s father delivers winding sermons in an abandoned gas station. He takes up serpents and praises the Lord for his blighted white eye, proof of his divinity and key to his hold over the community, Wren, and her mother.
But over the course of one summer, a miracle performed by Wren’s father quickly turns to tragedy. As the order of her world begins to shatter, Wren must uncover the truth of her father’s mysterious legend and her mother’s harrowing history and complex bond with her best friend. And with that newfound knowledge, Wren can imagine a different future for herself than she has been told to expect.
Rich with epic love and epic loss, and diving deep into a world that is often forgotten but still part of America, Shiner reveals the hidden story behind two generations’ worth of Appalachian heartbreak and resolve. Amy Jo Burns brings us a smoldering, taut debut novel about modern female myth-making in a land of men-and one young girl who must ultimately open her eyes.
When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Jennifer Weiner
Today, I started reading The Breakaway: A Novel by Jennifer Weiner, an inspiring new book about love, family, friendship, secrets, and a life-changing journey. The story revolves around 33-year-old Abby Stern, who is content with her life despite not having a steady career and living in a college-like apartment.
She cherishes her good friends, her bike, and the bicycling club in Philadelphia. Abby is comfortable with her plus-size body most of the time and is engaged to Mark Medoff, her childhood sweetheart, whom she met at a weight-loss camp that her mother dragged her to.
However, Abby can’t shake off the feeling that something is amiss, and she can’t forget the breathtaking night she spent with Sebastian two years ago. When Abby gets an unexpected invitation to lead a cycling trip from NYC to Niagara Falls, she gladly accepts, hoping to get away from Mark and reflect on her life. But things get complicated when she spots Sebastian in the group, and her mother, Eileen, whom Abby blames for her body insecurities, joins the trip at the last minute.
The strangers on the journey soon become friends, hidden truths come to light, and a teenage girl with a secret brings the riders together in ways they never imagined. As they travel over 700 miles, Abby must re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about herself, her mother, and the nature of love.
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.
I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Laila Ibrahim
Scarlet Carnation: A Novel by Laila Ibrahim is a book I enjoyed reading. Having read this book, I am now a fan of Laila Ibrahim and look forward to reading more of her novels. In addition, I am a fan of historical fiction, and this is one of the best I have read about the second decade of the twentieth century.
May and Naomi are related, but their lives are very relatable to the reader. The promises of equality and transformation of women’s roles resonate even now. Bringing together the myriad issues they confront – racism, shaming for decisions they made, peace, and the interlocking of their families from a plantation, make this a book that I highly recommend.
The only observation was my shock at reading that they were petitioning President Coolidge at the start of WW I. It is a minor issue as the story flows strongly from the first to the last page.
The Goodreads overview highlights the narrative of the book.
In an early twentieth-century America roiling with racial injustice, class divides, and WWI, two women fight for their dreams in a galvanizing novel by the bestselling author of Golden Poppies. 1915. May and Naomi are extended families, their grandmothers’ lives inseparably entwined on a Virginia plantation in the volatile time leading up to the Civil War. For both women, the twentieth century promises social transformation and equal opportunity.
May, a young white woman, is on the brink of achieving the independent life she’s dreamed of since childhood. Naomi, a nurse, mother, and leader of the NAACP, has fulfilled her own dearest desire: buying a home for her family. But they both are about to learn that dreams can be destroyed in an instant. May’s future is upended, and she is forced to rely once again on her mother. Meanwhile, the white-majority neighborhood into which Naomi has moved is organizing against her while her sons are away fighting for their country.
In the tumult of a changing nation, these two women—whose grandmothers survived the Civil War—support each other’s quest for liberation and dignity. Both find the strength to confront injustice and the faith to thrive on their chosen paths.
When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
by Kathleen Grisson
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom was a book that I knew very little about who I took from our bookshelf. My wife had encouraged me to read it as it focused on the south, and she knew I ofter read both about that place and enjoyed history.
From the opening pages, It became a book that I could not put down.
Two characters narrate the book. One is Lavinia, an Irish girl orphaned and brought to the plantation by the master, a ship’s captain. She is assigned to the kitchen house to work with Belle, who is the illegitimate child of the master of the estate.
As Lavinia grows under the tutelage of Belle, the story highlights the struggles of a plantation. Lavinia finds family and love from the enslaved even though she is only indentured. The distinction that skin color would have on their lives is one that Lavinia only learns at the end.
Through the unique eyes of Lavinia and Belle, Grissom’s debut novel unfolds in a heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of class, race, dignity, deep-buried secrets, and familial bonds.
The Kitchen House is Ms. Grissom’s first novel and impressed me and inspired me even though I have no skills as a writer.
I strongly recommend this book.
by Therese Anne Fowler
A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler is a book that was difficult to put down once I started it. A Good Neighborhood is a “gripping contemporary novel that examines the American dream through the lens of two families living side by side in an idyllic neighborhood, throughout one summer that changes their lives irrevocably.”
I selected the book as it focuses, among other issues, on gentrification and environmental degradation. But to say that is what it is about would be a disservice. It also includes a full range of the social issues of our time.
But with little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie’s yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers. Told from multiple points of view, A Good Neighborhood asks big questions about life in America today ― what does it mean to be a good neighbor? How do we live alongside each other when we don’t see eye to eye? ― as it explores the effects of class, race, and heartrending star-crossed love in a story that’s as provocative as it is powerful.
Ms. Fowler narrates the book. Greek Chorus. By doing this, she ensures that we are part of the story as much as readers.
We need to find answers to the big questions if we are to be good neighbors.
The effects of class, race, and heartrending star-crossed love make this a must-read book.
I recommend the book to all readers.
by Chris Bohjalian
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian is “a compulsively readable novel that explores questions of human responsibility that are as fundamental to our society now as they were when the book was first published.” Forty years after the book was published, it is just as relevant, if not more so. Indeed, the book’s topics are more relevant today with the current set of decisions by the Supreme Court.
After reading The Pull of the Stars and watching every season of Call the Midwives, this was the logical next book for me to read. It is also one that I know Jan read and liked.
I highly recommend this book!
The Goodreads summary provides a concise overview.
The time is 1981, and Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for fifteen years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures to save a baby’s life. She performs an emergency Caesarean section on its mother, who appears to have died in labor. But what if—as Sibyl’s assistant later charges—the patient wasn’t already dead, and it was Sibyl who inadvertently killed her?
As recounted by Sibyl’s precocious fourteen-year-old daughter, Connie, the ensuing trial bears the earmarks of a witch hunt except that all its participants are acting from the highest motives—and the defendant increasingly appears to be guilty. As Sibyl Danforth faces the antagonism of the law, the hostility of traditional doctors, and the accusations of her conscience, Midwives engages, moves, and transfixes us as only the best novels ever do.
When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.
