Widow of the South by Robert Hicks ✔✔✔✔

I was told about this book by a woman I occasionally golf with here in Florida. She said it was an excellent book, and explained a bit about the subject of the book, and also told me the title was "Woman of the South". Well, I couldn't find that title, and I sort of forgot about it. Then, about two years later a member of our book club and I were talking about our mutual interest in reading historical fiction, and she mentioned a book she'd read called "Queen of the South". She had the book and said she'd leave it in my mailbox at home, but it never arrived. Meanwhile, I'm now searching for the title "Queen of the South" on the Internet, with no luck.

I don't even recall now how I found out the correct title, probably while I was searching for something else on the local library's website, but I immediately knew this was the title I was searching for - the library system here has five copies of the book, and it has been borrowed a total of 72 times to date. That's a good enough validation for me, plus the fact that I discovered the book was set in Franklin, TN, a small city south of Nashville on I-65 a city where we spent one night in a hotel on our way north a few years back, completely oblivious to the history around us.

Franklin, Tennessee was the site of one of the bloodiest Civil War battles, a battle which took place on a single morning in November,1864, with 9200 casualties. Carrie McGavock was named the Widow of the South ( and she was a real person) because first of all the plantation where she lived was turned into a hospital for survivors of the battle, and she nursed many of them herself. But Carrie also - some years after the war - took it upon herself to write to the parents of every single man who died in her hospital, and then eventually retrieved 1500 bodies of Confederates whose remains had simply been plowed over, identified them, and created a cemetery for them in a field near her plantation She herself had lost three children before the war even began, and so it was tremendously important to her to treat these casualties of war with respect and compassion.

The final chapter of the book is the true story of Carrie, with pictures of her family, her servant Mariah who was given to her as a slave when she was a child but who was almost the completion of her own soul, and the cemetery itself.

Mike is reading the book right now and I think we'll visit this area on our way home this year.

Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich In The Klondike by Charlotte Gray ✔✔✔✔

This book is the story of the Klondike Gold Rush told through the lives of six people: the miner Bill Haskell, the saintly priest, Father Judge, the savvy 24-year-old businesswoman Belinda Mulrooney, the British journalist Flora Shaw, the highly disciplined Sam Steele of the Mounties, and the writer Jack London, whose stories about the North made him a legend.

Mike and I visited Dawson City four years ago when we were on a Holland America trip. Mike has a family member who went to Dawson as a young man in the 1920s and died there in 1945, so we climbed a very long hill - me wearing flip flops, as I recall - to find the local cemetery where James McCrank was buried, and we did!


The stories of these six people in this book were fascinating - the author interwove their stories so well, and each one was so unique from the other. The hardships of Bill Haskell were perhaps the most affecting, particularly dealing with the challenges of spending a winter in such a remote area with so few resources.

I wish I'd read this before we went to Dawson, but it sure brought back some memories.

Wishin' and Hopin' By Wally Lamb ✔✔✔✔

This book just caught my eye when I was in Bay County Library - a little book, written by Wally Lamb, and a Christmas story - so I picked it up. Well, I read it in one day, laughed till I cried at least twice, and enjoyed some good chuckles too. It's the story of 10-year-old Felix Funicello, distant cousin of Annette Funicello, and his adventures at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Parochial School, especially as the 5th grade class prepares for their Christmas pageant.

There's Felix, who's small and very innocent, and doesn't understand the off-colour jokes he's told, the supply teacher who comes from Quebec, Rosalie, who is the class pain in the ass,Zhenya, a Russian immigrant with " big bazoom-booms" and a hilarious accent so funny I had to read it aloud, Felix's Mom and her adventure at the Pillsbury Bake-Off - wow, in some 254 pages, Wally Lamb packs in a lot.

I won't forget this one too soon! The pageant itself is the funniest since John Irving's "A Prayer For Owen Meany", which had me in stitches while driving from KL to Sudbury for a hockey tournament and Karen and David wondered why Mom was crying......

I Still Dream About You - Fannie Flagg ✔✔✔✔

A thoroughly entertaining novel, I Still Dream About You could be classified as chick lit, but with a difference. First of all, the chicks are older, and the level of writing is much better.

The novel is set in Birmingham, Alabama and the main characters, Maggie, Brenda, Hazel, and Edith all work at a real estate firm owned by Hazel, a midget who has died before this story takes place, but whose spirit is still very much present. There's a villain too, Babs Bingington, a rival agent, who is pure venom.

There's a mystery about a house high up on a mountain overlooking Birmingham, a house that has always fascinated Maggie, a former Miss Alabama. Brenda is an overweight friend whose main comfort is ice cream and doughnuts. All this is related with a gentle sense of humor, no condescension, just a sort of bemused or amused detachment.

I read it very quickly and enjoyed every minute of it. Flagg also wrote Fried Green Tomatoes, another favorite - I saw the movie,too with Kathy Baker - I saw her as Brenda in this, even though Brenda is black.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern ✔✔✔✔✔

"The circus arrives without warning"
This is the first sentence of this imaginative story, a story that wrapped itself around me and wouldn't let go until I'd finished it.
Le Cirque des Reves is its name - and it only operates at night.
It's like a dream really - I don't like fantasy in fiction, but this is just on the edge of fantasy.
Probably the best novel I read this year.
Enough said. I'm still in love with it.