2025 Book Reviews
Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten, Memoir, 2024
Ina Garten, food entrepreneur, rose to public notice when she took over the Barefoot Contessa, a specialty food store in Southhampton Beach, New York. Ina shares her life story shares how a young woman with little self-worth grew a successful business in the food world. Her marriage of 60 years is an astonishing accomplishment, given they often worked in high-demand jobs in different parts of the country (and sometimes the world!) I highly recommend the audiobook, which Ina narrates. It’s like sitting across from Ina at a Parisian café and listening to tell her story. I may have to hear it for that reason alone!
The Great Divide by Cristina Henriqez, Historical Fiction, 2024
Henriquez tells the story of the building of the Panama Canal by bringing together individual stories. There is the Panamanian fisherman who did not want his son, Omar, to leave the family business for the Canal. There is also a scientist determined to eliminate malaria who intersects with young, newly arrived Ada who is trying to raise money for her sister’s surgery. And there are others who loved or hated this monumental undertaking whose stories remind us that while the Canal brought people together, it also separated them.
Dreamland by Nicholas Sparks, Fiction, 2023
The story alternates between a single mother, Beverly, and a single farmer, Colby. Beverly has relocated, running away from an abusive husband. When 10-year-old Tommy thinks he heard someone on the roof during the night, Beverly’s focus dramatically changes to do everything to protect Tommy. Colby is running a farm for his aunt and uncle because his parents have died. He also is an occasional songwriter and guitar-strumming singer. When he takes a gig in Florida, he meets Morgan, also a singer and songwriter. In the way only Nicholas Sparks can do, he brings all the stories together in an unexpected twist. Worth the read just to find out how he does it.
The Trackers by Charles Frazier, Fiction, 2023
Charles Frazier builds a gripping story in the Depression and the New Deal era. When Val takes a New Deal job painting a mural for a post office in Dawes, Wisconsin, he meets John and Eve Long. With John’s political aspirations and Eve’s background in riding the rails and singing in a swing band, Val’s life is swept up in their dysfunction. When Eve leaves her husband and disappears, her husband sends Val to “track” her. It is a journey of mystery, danger, and secret love. Frazier proves his storytelling prowess in this almost unbelievable story.
Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christian Classic, 1939
In 1935 Dietrich Bonhoeffer accepted a position as head of an underground Seminary dedicated to training pastors in Nazi-permeated Germany. In this community, called the Confessing Church, he wrote and taught the basics of Christian community, what it means to live together with prayer, service, and confession, all centered around Christ. Educating a group to defy Nazism was only one of the reasons he was executed in 1945. His words read like Paul’s epistles, unswervingly dedicated to Christ’s call to be Light in any darkness through community.
The Orphan’s Tale by Pam Jenoff, Historical Fiction, 2017
Noe is sixteen when she gives birth to a baby by a German soldier. When her baby is taken away from her and her family disowns her, Noe works cleaning railway cars. One day, she finds a car full of Jewish babies. She takes one and runs away, finding a new home in a traveling German circus. (Little known fact: Many circuses hid Jews among their performers.) There, Astrid trains her as a trapeze performer. The two women’s stories intertwine to tell a story of friendship, loss, and salvation in unexpected ways.
Being Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn, 2023, Biography
After Elisabeth Elliot’s husband, Jim, was killed by Amazonian tribesmen along with three other missionaries, Elisabeth made headlines when she returned to Ecuador to work among the same people who made her a widow. This book chronicles the details of Elizabeth’s early life, return to the U.S., two subsequent marriages, one returning her to widowhood. Vaughn skillfully, without sugar coating, shares this revealing, inspiring, but sometimes sad story of a woman’s spiritual and intellectual journey to understand and obey God’s will at any cost.
The Henna Artist by Alki Joshi, Fiction, 2020.
When fifteen-year-old Lakshmi runs away from a brutal marriage, she begins a new life in post-British Jaipur in the 1950s. She rebuilds her life as a henna artist, painting henna pictures on a woman's hands, torsos, or feet as part of a celebratory tradition. Using her henna skills and knowledge of herbs and roots, she carves an independent life among women of wealth and social standing. When a teenage sister she did not know about enters her life, the carefully constructed life Lakshmi has built is threatened. However, it helps her discover that family is her missing connection. A rich and sometimes harsh story opened a world I knew nothing about. Note: This book is first in a trilogy.
Last Twilight in Paris by Pam Jenoff, Historical Fiction, 2025
The story opens with the young love of Helaine and Gabriel, who marry despite her Jewish parent's objections because Gabriel is not Jewish. Cellist Gabriel travels to play for German troops but tells Helaine he’s traveling with the community orchestra. When letters no longer come, Helaine reports him missing to German police and is arrested because she is a Jew. A parallel story involves Louise, a Red Cross worker in Germany, traveling with Franny, an entertainer, who is found dead. Then, the story becomes a mystery to solve. The story allows the little known fact that a department store, Levitan, was used to collect and re-sell confiscated Jewish possessions while serving as a Nazi prison. The story reminds us that people aren’t always who we think they are, and sharing the truth connects more than silence. A story like this always asks, “What would I have done?”