What We Keep

What We Keep by Elizabeth Berg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm trying to catch up on Elizabeth Berg's writings and this one, as usual, didn't let me down. Berg's exquisite sense of sister/daughter/mother relationships shine through in What We Keep.

Looking back, a woman flying to a reunion of sorts, thinks back to the summer when everything went wrong... At 12 years of age, Ginny Young and her 13 year old sister Sharla felt safe in the cusp of their parent's love. Life was boring and predictable but that's what made them feel safe and secure. When a new neighbor moves in, right next door, the girls are excited to find that Jasmine is a very attractive woman, who dresses in the latest styles. The summer starts out well but begins to fall apart as Jasmine's influence takes over...

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The Midwife

Call The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times by Jennifer Worth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jennifer Worth, a young midwife in London's East End slums, writes about her true life experiences - the joy of birth, loss of life, and all the everyday experiences with everyday, down-to-earth people. Trained as a nurse and a midwife, Jenny came to reside at Nonnatus House, a Convent next to a bomb site. The streets were full of children - no one owned a car on the back streets so they were safe to play in. Jenny grew to love the hard-working Sisters at Nonnatus and her patients, mostly very poor and living in terrible conditions.

After seeing Call the Midwife, a DVD that was in our library, I had to read the book. Usually, it's the reversal. I loved the first book as I did the movie and am looking forward to reading the second in the series. Being born in the baby-boom age of 1960, and only 15 years after World War ll ended, I see similarities between the London East End docks and the hills of Appalachia.

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The Good Dream

The Good Dream by Donna VanLiere
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What happens when you're just an independent, 30something, according-to-the-town spinster, who goes against the naysayers to save a poor, abused little boy from the hills? Lonely since the death of her beloved mother, Ivorie Walker is just putting one foot in front of the other. Doing her daily chores, milking the cow, weeding the garden, canning the vegetables, Ivorie's life is just an empty routine rut. Other than her dog Sally, her brother Henry, and his wife Loretta, there's no family nearby. When a dirty faced young feller gets caught stealing tomatoes in her garden, Ivorie's life begins to change in unusual, courageous ways.

I have loved reading all of VanLiere's Christmas books and was excited to see she had written a full length novel. This book is so uplifting and moving - you'll fall in love with the main characters.

One of favorite quotes from Ivorie: There comes a time when you don't know what you're capable of anymore. Looking back, say five or even two years ago, you can remember what you were capable of then - how you thought, what you did, who you loved, who people said you were. Then something happens and takes that away; the basket of good intentions you've been toting around, the trunk of dreams you've been pulling behind you - all of it is gone in an instant, and it's just you, naked, bare, exposed.


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