The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

What a book! Wow! I didn't think I would be interested in it (I had put it off for nearly a year), but I couldn't be more mistaken.
A wonderful book, a family saga of a missionary venture in darkest Africa gone wrong, told through the voices of the missionary's wife and each of his four daughters.
In 1959, a wild-eyed, fiercely evangelistic Baptist preacher and his family set up housekeeping in a village of the Belgian Congo, bent on converting the people, baptizing them in the Kwilu River. Rev. Price was the kind of missionary who gives Christians a bad name. Neither teaching nor demonstrating the love of Christ, he butchers the native tongue, saying "poisonwood" when he means "precious" for example, and insists on baptizing the children in the crocodile-infested river, in which no one even dares to wade.
Many disasters occur, most of them natural: floods, famine, and invasion of army ants. The village peacefully revolts against the foreign religion of the American, and, due to violent political revolution elsewhere in Belgian Congo as well as in other African nations, the Prices are urged by the missionary society to return to America, and their funding disappears. Nevertheless, Rev. Price stubbornly remains, holding church, but no one comes except his family. If it weren't for a few friends in the village who supported the wife and daughters, the family wouldn't make it.
It takes a devastatingly tragic event to cause the wife and daughters to leave Rev. Price. The rest of the novel follows their lives as they grow to adulthood and go their separate ways. The last chapter is surprisingly touching and bittersweet.

Favorite characters: Adah, Anatole, Mama Mwanza, Brother Fowles
Least favorite: Rev. Price, Rachel as an adult, Mr. Axelroot

Memorable quotes: from Adah, the handicapped daughter, "The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we'd like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands. ... We would rather be just like us, and have that be all right." page 559

Leah, speaking of the effects of war on a society, "In our village there are very few boys of an age to climb trees for birds' nests, or girls stomping down the road with a sibling clutched sideways like an oversized rag doll. I notice their absence everywhere. The war cost most of its lives among children under ten. That great quiet void is moving slowly upward through us. A war leaves holes in so much more than the dams and roads that can be rebuilt." page 592

Family Pictures, by Jane Green

This was a very enjoyable, thought-provoking book, except for the explicit sexual descriptions (I admit I am a prude). There were some errors in context that were mildly annoying, but I could get past them. I could predict from the blurb what was going to happen, and was just waiting for it to "hit the fan." It did, very explosively, and devastatingly, utterly wrecking the lives of two families. How the women managed to pull themselves and their children out of the pit made interesting reading.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel, by Rebecca Wells

Read and reviewed in November, 2014. Released later

Wow, what a wild ride! A mother's life, especially her adolesence, as seen through the eyes of her eldest daughter, Siddalee, with frequent flashbacks as remembered by the mother, Vivi. Herself the daughter of an alcoholic, abusive father and an overly pious, strictly religious mother, Vivi was the ringleader of a group of four girls who remained best friends from childhood to late middle age. They had some wild escapades in their youth, including a skinny-dipping party in the town's water tower! Vivi was beaten by her father, chastised by her mother, and sent to a strict Catholic girls' boarding school. No wonder that she became an alcoholic, and that her own four young children were overwhelming for her. The surprising thing is that her daughter Sidda turned out to be as normal as she was.

The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd

Read, reviewed, and released April-May, 2014

A story of a motherless girl mistreated by her father. Her odyssey with her "nanny" reminded me a little of Huckleberry Finn and Jim. With her only clue a picture on a honey jar label, Lily and Rosaleen manage to find a safe refuge among a family of three African American sisters who keep bees and make honey. There is much interesting information about bees, bee-keeping, and honey. Surprisingly, Lily also finds answers to the mysteries surrounding her own family.

Peachtree Road, by Anne Rivers Siddons

Read, reviewed, and released in December, 2013

A sad, dark novel of family dysfunction, domestic violence, and insanity in a well-bred Southern family of the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia spanning from the early 1950s to the 1970s and 80s.

Shep, a middle aged man who describes himself as a recluse and a hermit reflects on his childhood at the burial of his cousin Lucy. He and Lucy bonded as friends and confidants from the moment she moved into his family home when she was five years old and he was seven. The novel carries us through the adventures of their childhood, the risks of adolescence, and the angst of early adulthood, along with that of their families and close friends.
The fact that Lucy died is no spoiler, as the Prologue opens with her funeral. How she died is the surprise, and Shep's fate remains a mystery.

Bright Flows The River, by Taylor Caldwell

Reviewed in February, 2013, released later

I tried reading this book earlier this month, but finally gave up. Too depressing, all in a mental hospital with a patient who tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide. Frequent flashbacks to his dysfunctional childhood and unhappy marriage. I couldn't get involved enough in the characters to continue reading. This book is now available, and will be released soon.

Fall On Your Knees, by Ann-Marie MacDonald

Read, reviewed, and released May-June, 2010

An Oprah's Book Club book

A hard-working young man determined to succeed in life unexpectedly fell for the 13-year-old daughter of a client, who climbed from her window and ran away with him. Married life is not what either of them expected, but they are trying to adjust to it and to each other. That's as far as I've gotten; it's a fascinating book!

It was a fascinating book - very hard to read due to difficult and unsettling subjects, but impossible to put down (for long anyway)! This is the saga of a dysfunctional family that encompasses everything, but in the end love and respect and forgiveness conquer.

The Book of Ruth, by Jane Hamilton

I read and reviewed this book in September, 2002. I was a new Bookcrosser, and had met another new Bookcrosser at a bookstore. We exchanged books, as Bookcrossers do. This is the one she gave me; I sent it to another Bookcrosser after finishing it, as part of a bookbox.

I found The Book of Ruth disturbing, depressing, and haunting, but I couldn't put it down. Just had to keep reading, to find out what happens next. The horriying climax is indescribable.

This book has remained in my mind like few others. It was disturbing, yes, and I didn't enjoy reading it, but it has made me think, and consider in a new way people I might not have given a second thought. The main character in The Book of Ruth was so unlike me that I had trouble relating to her, but I was able to see that people like her aren't just "poor white trash." They have feelings, emotions, dreams, hopes, and maybe make poor decisions for lack of perceiving better choices.

I won't just dismiss such people when I see them around town, or read about them in the newspaper. I will try to remember that they are real people with real lives, and problems that I can't imagine.