What I expected to be a summer read turned out to be one of the best mysteries I’ve read in a long time. Check out my review of The Beach Trees and the reviews of others on the BlogHer Book Club website:
BlogHer Book Club site for The Beach Trees by Karen White.
Careful, though! My review has spoilers.
Welcome to my stop on the Double Trouble blog tour! After you read my review (and enter the giveaway) that you hop around to the other blogs who are hosting. It’ll give you a chance to get to know some other bloggers and read some more reviews of this fun little mystery. Read more…
Sisters Lindsay and Kerrie Ann have known hardship from an early age. Without guidance from their neglectful mother, their only aid came from an unlikely source, a retired exotic dancer by the name of Miss Honi Love. When the girls’ mother was sent to prison, Miss Honi tried unsuccessfully to save them from being separated and sent into foster care.
Thirty years later, Lindsay is still trying to reconnect with her sister. The owner of a bookstore in the sleepy California seaside town of Blue Moon Bay, she was lucky enough to have been adopted by a loving couple. Unbeknownst to her, Kerrie Ann has suffered a very different life. Bounced from one foster home to the next, she ran away as a teenager before becoming a drug-addicted single mother. Now, newly sober, Kerrie Ann is fighting to regain custody of the little girl who was taken from her.
Neither sister’s expectations are met when they’re finally reunited. But as the two sisters engage in the fiercest battles of their lives, they are at last drawn together despite their differences, restoring belief in the unshakable bond of family. Read more…
It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn’s shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night. Seven-year-old Calli Clark is sweet, gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler. Calli’s mother, Antonia, tried to be the best mother she could within the confines of marriage to a mostly absent, often angry husband. Now, though she denies that her husband could be involved in the possible abductions, she fears her decision to stay in her marriage has cost her more than her daughter’s voice. Petra Gregory is Calli’s best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra nor Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered. Desperate to find his child, Martin Gregory is forced to confront a side of himself he did not know existed beneath his intellectual, professorial demeanor. Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.
My wonderful husband guest posts today a review of a new book of poetry.
Patricia Neely Dorsey’s Reflections of a Mississippi Magnolia-A Life in Poems is “a true celebration of the south and things southern.” The author states , “There are so many negative connotations associated with Mississippi and the south in general. In my book, using childhood memories, personal thoughts and dreams, I attempt to give a positive glimpse into the southern way of life. In my book I try to show that there is much is more to Mississippi and the south than all of the negatives usually portrayed .I invite readers to Meet Mississippi (and the south) Through Poetry, Prose and The Written Word.”
It may sound odd that, as a student of literature and a writer, I have no idea what I really want from a poem. I know what I like and I know what I don’t like. I know why I like what I do and why I don’t like what I don’t. Sometimes, though, everything that would normally work toward making me like a poem just gets broken down. Perhaps it is an intriguing subject that gets overshadowed and lost in a forest of predictable meter and rhyme. Perhaps it is an interesting meter devoted to a subject that doesn’t quite measure up. Having said all of this, I can now say that I have a very mixed opinion of Patricia Neely-Dorsey’s Reflections of a Mississippi Magnolia.
I do not believe that there is a poem in this collection that Mrs. Neely-Dorsey did not honestly feel, that does not spring from who she is as an individual who wants to share her own understanding of life with the world at large. However, very many of the poems that book-end this collection fall into the category of “poems whose subjects are not well-met by their structure.” Mrs. Neely-Dorsey has an affinity for her Southern life – an affinity with which I can sympathize – that is clearly expressed, sentimental as it may be. But sentimentality can go two different ways: sappy romanticism and cut-me-to-the-quick art-that-can-be-nothing-less. Sadly, this volume is opened and closed by pieces that fall into the “sappy” category. The meter, matched with the subject matter, in a strange sort of way, reminds me very much of Phyllis Wheatley. This can be taken in many different ways, so let me declare my stance on Wheatley: I believe that she was a brilliant poet who severely limited herself by her use of meter and rhyme.
If one is seeking to buy a volume of “Southern Literature” for someone who takes a simple joy in their Southern Life, this would be a perfect piece of literature. But one who is seeking to gift a poet, or one cultured in literature and its affects, needs to have the following as a disclaimer: one must seek one’s treasure. What I mean is that the incessant iambic feet and ABCB… rhyme scheme get a bit… well…monotonous, amateur, and boring. Someone seeking poetry for the sake of experiencing art, were they impatient in their endeavors, would most likely put the book down after a few poems. The problem is that this is a very sad truth. If the book were filled with this type of poem, setting it down so soon would be no great loss, but it isn’t. There are several real gems buried here, some poems that honestly made me stop reading for a second to say “wow” and then hope to find another so beautiful for its mere simplicity.
This is the spark of this collection: its simple moments. What Mrs. Neely-Dorsey is trying to capture here in so many of her poems is the simple beauty of Southern life. When she gives up on trying to portray that through the frills of what a naïve reader would consider the necessities of poetry and just writes, she honestly captures something: form matches content and the beauty that art can manifest shines through. I would like to close with two short poems that I think really express my point, where attempts at meter and rhyme are dropped and the only thing that holds the poem together as a poem are its words and the idea they are attempting to communicate, to capture.
Avid Reader
I want to be
Your favorite book,
That you read
Over and over again,
From cover to cover,
And get lost in the story.
Not a fairy tale.
Not a mystery.
No cliff hangers.
Just
A Plain
Old Fashioned
Love Story
Partyline
Do you remember
Picking up the phone…
“Excuse me”
“Could I make a call, please?”
“It’s an emergency.”
“Five minutes?”
“O.K.”
“Thank You.” Click.
Or listening in on some juicy gossip,
Or some steamy love talk late at night,
Easing up the receiver …Slowly…Carefully…
(muffled giggles)
“Shhhhh”
“Be quiet, they’ll hear us.”
“Hey you kids, quit playing on the phone!”
“Uhhh..ohhhh, we’re caught.” Click.
Partyline.
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