Tamarack County by William Kent Krueger

 

"Anger blinds, Corcoran O'Connor. To hunt, if that is what is in your heart, you will need a clear eye. For that you will need a clear mind. The animal you hunt does not act out of anger. It acts in the way it does because that is its nature.... Your nature is different."

        -Henry Meloux's sage advice

Wow! I practically inhaled this one. Hard to put down! Definitely a 5 rating.

Tamarack County is Number 13 in the Cork O'Connor series and I have enjoyed them all on my Kindle. The next one is Windigo Island which I have in hard copy purchased at a used bookstore months ago and awaiting its turn. 

This one was timely, set at Christmas time in Tamarack County, and I was reading it a few days before that holiday. It involved a missing elderly woman, a brutally murdered pet dog, an innocent man falsely imprisoned, someone set on vigilante justice and a grave danger to Cork's family.

The novel held a gripping plot, characters I've become very fond of and even a bit of romantic intrigue. I look forward to #14!

Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg

 

"A Jewish teaching says those who die just before the Jewish new year are the ones God has held back until the last moment because they were needed most and were the most righteous. And so it was that #RBG died as the sun was setting last night marking the beginning of Rosh Hashanah."

           -Nina Totenberg, after the death of her dear friend, Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Not having been an NPR listener, I hadn't heard of Nina Totenberg. This book, subtitled A Memoir on the Power of Friendships, highlights her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg and others in high places. I selected the book because of my great admiration for the "notorious RBG" as Justice Ginsberg came to be affectionately called.

Nina and Ruth shared a near 50-year friendship, helping each other through some extremely difficult times in their lives, including the deaths of each of their husbands and Ruth's own monumental battles with cancer.

I learned so much about RBG's early career and her efforts to break the glass ceiling. I was so impressed with her devoted husband Marty who in many ways was the "wind beneath her wings." It was so interesting to know about other Supreme Court Justices who had only been names in the news, like Justice Scalia---highly respected but seemingly the life of any party, as well.

Totenberg also writes of her friendship with Cokie Roberts, a coworker at NPR. Hers was a name I was familiar with having read her nonfiction Founding Mothers a few years ago.

I am glad I read Dinners with Ruth; it was both educational and entertaining. My rating is 4.

A Castle in Brooklyn: A Novel by Shirley Russak Wachtel

 

"All in all, it was a sweet little home that was always, it seemed, filled with laughter and warmth and light. Not a big ostentatious home with ornate crystal bowls and fancy engravings, and, in fact, not really very big at all. But for Jacob, it was everything----a castle."

            -Jacob's vision, from the Prologue

This Amazon First Reads selection was a disappointment. I normally enjoy historical fiction and I thought this one was centered around the Holocaust. I almost always find such survival stories compelling and inspiring. Although a part of the background of this novel is 1944 Poland, very little involves that setting; it is used more in a few flashbacks. Main character Jacob, a Jew, escapes the Nazis as a young man and helps a fellow refugee, Zalman, to make it out, as well. The two become very close friends, almost like brothers. They end up in Brooklyn where Jacob enlists Zalman's design expertise to build his "castle." (See quote.)

Jacob marries Esther who, even in the face of tragedy, is a rock.

I have rated A Castle in Brooklyn a 3 but was thinking more like a 2+ or 3-. The story was a lot of talk and not much action and the last part left me wondering if the author just needed extra pages to satisfy the publisher. After Jacob's death, Esther moves to Florida (I don't remember why) and leaves her friend and neighbor Florrie to handle the rental of Jacob's "castle." Two rentals work out poorly and the final potential tenant is connected to Zalman. The ending was interesting but the other two rentals seemed pointless.

This one I would not recommend.

The Boy in the Photo by Nicole Trope

 

"She realizes that such a physically close relationship must fade as a child grows, but she has missed the slow raising of boundaries that she is sure happens in every family. Instead she has lost an affectionate little boy and found a skittish, rigid adolescent in his place."

            -Megan's thoughts, from the novel

This novel was an Amazon First Reads selection and it was a good one. One description added as a subtitle in a couple of places was "An absolutely gripping and emotional page turner." And indeed, it was all of that!

Single mother, Megan, is still grieving the loss of her young son who was kidnapped by her ex-husband Greg 6 years previous. The two have seemingly fallen off the face of the earth. Just when she is close to giving up hope, son Daniel, now 12 years old is found. He is almost unrecognizable to Megan, as the quote above might reveal. Daniel has obviously had his mind poisoned against his mother by Greg. The difficulty of this situation can hardly be overstated. It makes me wonder how many families have been torn apart by such a situation in real life.

The novel goes from the kidnapping to present day in which Megan has finally remarried--- Michael, a detective working on Daniel's case, and they have a baby girl, Evie. Interspersed there are narratives telling Daniel's story. There are many BIG surprises along the way.

I have never read this author's work until now, but I would definitely read more. I found the plot of The Boy in the Photo compelling and quite intense. I am rating it a 4+.