Lipstick in Afghanistan by Roberta Gately *Review*

Elsa wants to help. In her young life she has already went through a lot with her own family, and now that they are all gone she wants to reach out and take care of someone else. Seeing an ad in a magazine for Aide du Monde, a relief organization, she decides to give them a call. But what she lacks at this point as a young nurse in the local hospital is experience. Not giving up, she joins the ER/Trauma unit and not only gains experience, but confidence as well. Six months later she gets her assignment- Afghanistan.

Then, 9/11 happens and her assignment is put on hold. She's crushed but lets them know she's still interested in helping out and she would still go to Afghanistan if called. The following spring that's exactly what happens.

Dropped off by jeep in the dusty mud plastered village of Bamiyan, Elsa begins her year of working with the sick and the injured at the little clinic. At first, met with resistance by the male Afghani doctor, she quickly gains friends and respect as she treats the patients and vllagers with love.

Then she meets Parween, and though they are world's apart, they become fast friends. She's with Parween when Parween loses her dear friend Mariam, and Parween is there when Elsa falls in love with Mike, a soldier close by on assignment.

This novel starts out so realistically I had to keep looking at the back cover to see if it was autobiographical, and indeed, it just might be. The author Roberta Gately served as a nurse and humanitarian aid worker in third world war zones ranging from Afghanistan to Africa. But I believe, realistic as it sounds, it is just a novel with some very real touches from the author who lived what she writes about.

I enjoyed this journey to another country and another culture. Gately writes well and I grew to love her characters, especially Parween. 3/5 stars

Sunday Confessional- Super Bowl Sunday

I confess. I love Superbowl Sunday. I don't like football, nor do I care what teams get there. Some people watch it just for the commercials or the half-time show. I don't watch either. Why then do I love Superbowl Sunday every year? The food of course!

Every year someone in our family decides to throw a Superbowl party and everybody brings an appetizer type item. There's always such a fun variety of foods and new recipes to try out. During the afternoon the die hard fans watch the game. The rest of us play cards. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to go home a few dollars richer, always I go home a few pounds heavier.

This year the extended family wasn't able to pull a party together due to snowbirds being gone and my mom staying with her father to take care of him, but I still decided to have a little party just for my immediate family. I made ham & turkey sandwiches, baked beans, hamburger spread for french bread, bean dip, jalapeno poppers, crab spread, chips and dip and salsa, crackers & cheese, and cereal bars. Even with the small group I have it's still all about the food!

What about you? What do you enjoy most about Superbowl Sunday?

Sunday Confessional

I confess. I am a coupon freak! My kids tease me, my hubby shakes his head, my parents laugh and some of my coworkers are in awe of the coupon deals I come home with. I can't help it, I'm hooked.

I have dabbled with it a time or two in the past but last August I got looking around the Internet and found some websites that not only told me where to find the good deals, but linked me to the coupons to get them! No work for me to do, no thinking, everything was there for me.

I decided to start my stockpile then and there. My hubby works on commission at his job and due to the number of resorts on his route, and the bareness of those resorts in the cold Minnesota winters his paychecks are a LOT smaller in the 9 months of cooler weather. It seems like we use his bigger summer checks to save just to get us through the winter and we never seem to get ahead. I figured if I could take a month or two and start building a stockpile of items bought for a little bit of nothing it would carry us through the smaller winter paychecks.

Even though I got a late start, my stockpile in just 2 months was pretty impressive. I had purchased for pennies (or got FREE) enough laundry detergent, air fresheners, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, razors, candles, dental floss, mouthwash, toothpaste, deodorant, body wash, pain reliever, and cold medicine to last us until June.

On the food side I had enough cereal, pasta, rice, tomato sauce, cream soups, mini raviolios, spaghetti sauce, instant oatmeal & tomato paste to get me at least until March if not later.

The couponing is helping a lot and I like having a full pantry. Some weeks if hubby's check is smaller then we thought it would be we can plan enough meals using pantry items that all we have to buy is fresh meats, fruits and veggies. It's a good feeling to know I'm taking care of the family and I plan on being even more prepared for next winter.

I Am Hutterite by Mary Ann Kirkby

I love reading books about different religions, cultures, and peoples. So when I saw a review for a book about the Hutterites in Canada I had to reserve it at my local library.

Mary Ann (or Anne-Marie as she called throughout her childhood) takes us through her life in a Hutterite community. She loves the feeling of family and togetherness as everything done in the community is done together. Women work for a week doing all of the cooking for the community and then they are off the next week. If you want a pie you just go to the community kitchen and pick one up for lunschen- the meal that family eats together at 3 in the afternoon.

She talks about happy carefree times with her young cousins between the hard work days and the church services every evening. She is happy.

But her father struggles with some of the rigid rules he faces from the preacher in charge. Not being allowed to own a vehicle, he must borrow one from his brother-in-law Jakob, the leader and preacher of Fairholme, their community near Portage La Prairie. Ann-Marie's sister is asthmatic and has to visit the doctor often. Jakob thinks it's just an excuse for using the Econoline van and starts to deny their requests. When a younger brother comes into Ann-Marie's family and has complications that require surgery their request for the van is again denied. This time with fatal results. The Dornn family decides to leave the community.

Ann-Marie and her family struggle in forging a new life on their own. All the work that was done with the help of a community must all now be done on their own. Her father has never had a real job, in the community he was in charge of the chicken barn. He has never had a bank account or a loan since in the community all the money earned from the sales of vegetables or farm animals was put into the community coffers. Their clothing is outdated and plain, not the mini skirts and nylons the others are wearing.

This part of the book was great. I got a real feel for life in a Hutterite community and the challenges faced when leaving one. Mary Ann Kirkby describes it vividly. However, the subtitle of the book "The fascinating true story of a young woman's journey to reclaim her heritage" hints at something more. I kept waiting for that journey, but I feel as if she missed the bus. She does go back- more for a visit than anything else. I didn't see the journey and I didn't see any heritage reclaiming and for this I feel the subtitle was misleading and should have been left off the book.

That being said, I did enjoy the book. And while it wasn't an exciting or great read I did like it and learned a lot about a group of people I knew nothing about. My rating? 3 out of 5 stars

Due to Temporary Insanity this Blog is Closed Until Further Notice

I love this book blog, I really do. I have had a ball reading, reviewing, and chatting with all of you. Book bloggers are such a great (and supportive) community. Thanks for that!

Life, however, is getting in the way. My son recently had some reconstructive surgery done to his knee and physical therapy will be a daily occurrence. Add to that- my grandma is in hospice care and I have been helping take care of her. Her health is to the point where I will be spending nights with her because my grandpa is not able to do it by himself. I hope to eventually get to the point where I can start this up again, but it's kind of hard to take care of a book blog when you haven't (gasp!) finished a book in over a month.

Until I meet with you again- happy page turning to you!

Flower Children by Maxine Swann *Review*

A swing hangs in the middle of the living room. The house was built by the parents. The children- two girls and two boys- run free all day, dance naked in the rain, climb apple tress, ride ponies, press their faces into showers of leaves, rub mud all over their bodies and sit out in the sun to let it dry. When their parents invite other adults for skinny-dipping in the creek, the children memorize all the body parts to discuss later among themselves.
Maxine Swann's Flower Children is the intimate, shocking, funny, heartrending, and exultant story of four children growing up in rural Pennsylvania, the offspring of devout hippies who turned their backs on Ivy League education in favor of experiments in communal living and a whole new world for their children. The children, in turn, find themselves impossibly at odds with their surroundings, both delighted and unnerved by a life without limits. But as the parents split, and puberty hits, the ground seems to shift. The children's freedoms have not come without a cost to their innocence.

Based on the author's childhood, Flower Children was originally a short story. Now expanded to include many vignettes of the children's early life, we come to know the four siblings throughout their teen years as well.

What most kids these days would have thought of as an ideal childhood with no rules was at first a wonderful exploration period for Lu, Maeve, Tuck & Clyde. But upon entering school, the older children realize they know more then they should at such a tender age. They have been exposed to naked bodies being-allowed to take baths with their father and pot smoking parties. This embarasses them once they realize other children do not live like they do and they become shy and keep things to themselves.

Flower Children was an interesting account of an alternative lifestyle that I have not been exposed to before. That being said, I did not like the book. I can't give you a good reason why, it just was not what I thought it would be. 2/5 stars

The Boy on the Bus by Deborah Schupack *Review*

I wish I knew what to say about this book, but I don't. I wish the author knew where she was going with this story, but she didn't. I wish there had been a satisfying conclusion to the story, but there wasn't.

I was very disappointed in The Boy on the Bus. This short novel starts out with a mother who is waiting for her son to come home from school. But when the bus pulls up to her house, the boy on the bus is not her son. At least that's what the mother is sure of. He acts different, he seems strangely unfamiliar, and he even looks a bit older and more robust.

The author then takes us through a few days in their life as her and her partner Jeff and her daughter Katie try to know sort out what is going on. Jeff is away for months at a time at a job site in Canada- would he know if his son was acting different if he hasn't seen him in that long? Daughter Katie, away at boarding school gets called back for her opinion. She just thinks Charlie's acting weird.

Mother, Meg, left at home to shoulder the load of taking care of the household and her sickly, asthmatic eight-year-old is a little overwhelmed with life. She doesn't know what happened with her "real" son but she is determined to find out.

If this book would have been a mystery like it implied it could have made a good one. But the story went nowhere and with no resolution I was left hanging and a little stumped. Did I miss something? Did I not get it? More confused after I finished then when I started I would only give this 1/5 stars.

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain *Review*

A few weeks ago when I was looking for a shorter books to read for an all day reading marathon I came across a classic called The Postman Always Rings Twice. Never having read it, watched the movie, or read anything by this author, I pulled it off the library shelf.

The back cover proclaims it was "banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism." Written in 1934, I was curious to see what made this book so controversial it had to be banned.

This short novel is about Frank, a bum who never stays in one place for long, and Cora, the wife of a Greek restaurant owner. The two fall in love and can't keep their hands off each other. Theirs is a violent love full of ripped blouses, bitten lips and deliberate punches. It's a love you know can only end the way it started.

Cora can't stand being married to Nick Papadakis, especially when Frank enters her life and she sees what passion is. Frank and Cora come up with a plan to murder Nick and make it look like an accident. But when their plans are foiled and a local cop gets suspicious, Frank decides the best thing for him to do is to leave town and try to get Cora out of his system for good. Unable to forget about her, he returns and the affair picks up again hotter and wilder than before.

Again they come up with a plan. This time it's foolproof. It's the perfect murder. The Postman Always Rings Twice is a dark book full of cheating, lies, passion, murder, blackmail and double crossing. The violent tendencies during their lovemaking scenes were disturbing and I can understand how, in 1934, this book would have shocked a lot of people. That being said- I can honestly say I enjoyed this classic and would even consider nominating it for our book club's classic read month in October. 3/5 stars

The Girl in the Photograph by Gabrielle Donnelly *Review*

To meet Allegra O'Riordan of Chicago, you'd think she was like anyone else- a modern single woman in her thirties; a more or less lapsed Catholic; more or less gainfully employed; urban, independent, irreverent, and smart. But there's a hole in her life, and it doesn't really show until, going through her late father's effects, she comes upon a photograph of her mother. Now, her mother was a prim, unsmiling woman who died when she was three. But this is something- someone- else, a laughing, beautiful, sexy girl, who inscribed the picture to someone Allegra's never heard of.
Astonished and intrigued, she returns to her hometown of Los Angeles to find out more about this mother of hers, only to be met with smiles and evasions and a definite sense that people are keeping something from her- and of course, that only makes her more determined to find out what it is, even though she's beginning to suspect she's not going to like it one little bit...

Yes, Allegra O'Riordan sets off for Los Angeles to find out more about the mother she never knew. But what Aleegra doesn't count on is that nobody wants to talk about Theresa Higgins O' Riordan.

Certainly not her Uncle John and Aunt Katherine. Every time Allegra brings up the subject of her mother, Katherine clams up- not very talkative, is she- and herUncle John changes the subject. Allegra knows there's a story there somewhere and she's determined to find it.

With the help of a young, hot neighbor, Scott, and her cousin Jimmy they start to piece together a few clues but Allegra is frustrated to the point of giving up when she asks a kindly old priest at a family birthday party if he remembers Theresa Higgins and watches him turn cold at the sound of her mother's name.

"No one," said Father Carroll, "in the diocese of Los Angeles will forget
Theresa Higgins."

"A sin," said the priest, "is a sin."

Allegra shivers in the sunshine of the birthday party, and as the priest shuffles off she knows the answer she seeks might change her life forever. 3/5 stars

more than it hurts you by Darin Strauss

Josh Goldin was savoring a Friday afternoon break in the coffee room, harmlessly flirting with co-workers while anticipating the weekend at home where his wife, Dori, waited with their eight-month-old son, Zack. And then Josh's secretary rushed in, using words like intensive care, lost consciousness, blood...
That morning, Dori had walked into the emergency room with her son in severe distress. Enter Dr. Darlene Stokes, an African American physician and single mother whose life is dedicated both to her own son and navigating the tricky maze of modern-day medicine. But something about Dori stirred the doctor's suspicions. Darlene had heard of the sensational diagnosis of Munchhausen by proxy, where a mother intentionally harms her baby, but she had never come upon a case of it before. It's rarely diagnosed and extraordinarily controversial. Could it possibly have happened?
When these lives intersect with dramatic consequences, Darlene, Dori, and Josh are pushed to their breaking points as they confront the nightmare that has become their new reality.


Emotions are churning within me of which I cannot even begin to describe. The characters- all so well drawn, so lifelike, each with a heaviness all their own...

Dori- the mother accused of Munchhausen by proxy syndrome- of hurting her baby for the attention it will create. Dori is galled that anyone would think she could hurt little Zackie. After all, no one could love him more than she does. And she does love him immensely. She is burdened by the investigation by Child Protective Services and the need to prove she is a good mother.


Josh- the sometimes inattentive, but still loving husband and father is saddled with feelings of not being competent enough. Of not knowing enough "medical speak" to understand what's going on. Josh blindly trusts in his wife and creates a united front against their accusers.


Dr. Darlene Stokes- a black doctor who worked her way up from a fatherless home to become a respected doctor and head of the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of St Josephs hospital is targeted for reverse racism against this young Jewish family and is weighed down with the battle between hospital politics and the diagnosis she made without any proof but which she is sure is correct.

More than it hurts you is a thought provoking novel of right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair, conceptions and misconceptions. A novel that leaves you thinking about it long after you've put it down. 4/5 stars

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather *Review*

In 1851 Bishop Latour and his friend Father Vaillant are dispatched to New Mexico to reawaken its slumbering Catholicism. Moving along the endless prairies, Latour spreads his faith the only way he knows- gently, although he must contend with the unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Over nearly forty years, the two friends leave converts and enemies, crosses and occasionally ecstasy in their wake. But it takes a death for them to make their mark on the landscape for ever...

I have been trying to add more classics to my reading list lately. Other than Pride & Prejudice which is one of my all-time favorite books I am not a big fan of the classics. When a friend of mine told me this was her favorite Willa Cather book I thought I would give it a try. I think one of my main objections to classics is I get too caught up in the language style they are written in and the antique quality of the words and it becomes too much of a distraction.

Willa Cather does not write like this. Written in 1927, this classic at no time feels like a book that was written over eighty years ago. The words and phrases she uses, while simplistic, are very relatable. But just because her writing style was very easy to read does not mean I enjoyed the book.

This book, I am sorry to say, was boring. I did learn a lot about the early Catholic Church and the French missionaries who helped to spread the faith in its infancy in New Mexico, the hospitality of the Mexican people and the way the Indian peoples were very devout to both God and their own superstitious pagan ceremonies.

The reason I did not like it was that nothing happened in the book. Each chapter within the nine books of the novel was about a different person or event that took place. It seemed more like "Do you remember when we did ________?" or "Did I ever tell you about_______?" There was no plot, no suspense, no storyline; nothing to keep you wanting to read on.

It wasn't a terrible book, just not one I would highly recommend. 2/5 stars

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer *Review*

Eighteen years ago, Billy Peters disappeared. Everyone in town believes Billy was murdered- after all, serial killer Arnold Avery later admitted killing six other children and burying them on the same desolate moor that surrounds their small English village. Only Billy's mother is convinced he is alive. She still stands lonely guard at the front window of her home, waiting for her son to return, while her remaining family fragments around her.
But her twelve-year-old grandson Steven is determined to heal the cracks that gape between his nan, his mother, his brother, and himself. Steven desperately wants to bring his family closure, and if that means personally finding his uncle's corpse, he'll do it.
Spending his spare time digging holes all over the moor in the hope of turning up a body is a long shot, but at least it gives his life purpose.
Then at school, when the lesson turns to letter writing, Steven has a flash of inspiration... Careful to hide his identity, he secretly pens a letter to Avery in jail asking for help in finding the body of "W.P."- William "Billy" Peters.
So begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game. Just as Steven tries to use Avery to pinpoint the grave site, so Avery misdirects and teases his mysterious correspondent in order to relive his heinous crimes. And when Avery finally realizes that the letters he's receiving are from a twelve-year-old boy, suddenly his life has purpose too. Although his is far more dangerous...

Blacklands was an interesting book in that it was written from a different point of view that most authors don't explore. In the author's note, Ms. Bauer explains about wondering how a murder impacts a family. Not just the victim's parents, but a whole generation of other victims, like in this novel- the grandson of a woman whose son Billy was murdered many years ago.

The loss of Uncle Billy, a boy Steven never knew is still a deep loss. The feelings of loneliness and pain that Steven feels are palpable. His life is always a shadow of what it could have been had his nan given him some attention rather than waiting at the window for Billy to come home from school, or if his own mother hadn't harbored such bitterness over feeling she was never cared for because nan neglected her childhood to wait by the window. All Steven wants is a happy, normal childhood. He longs for laughter, hugs, and approval.

That's why finding his Uncle Billy's body has become such an obsession. If Billy can finally be put to rest giving his nan some closure, maybe- just maybe- his family can move on.

The cat -and-mouse game that ensues as Steven starts writing letters, and letters from the prison start coming back is compelling. Steven is desperate to fulfill his mission and excited about figuring out the clues within them. Looking into the mind of a serial killer is always disturbing- particularly those of a sick and twisted rapist and murderer of children. But, I found Blacklands to be a book that made me look at things in a whole new light and any book that stretches my mind to wrap around a different image or feeling than one I'm used to conceiving is one I have to recommend. 4/5 stars

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman *Review*

Bestselling author Susan Jane Gilman's new memoir is a hilarious and harrowing journey, a modern heart of darkness filled with communist operatives, backpackers, and pancakes.
In 1986, fresh out of college, Gilman and her friend Claire yearned to do something daring and original that did not involve getting a job. Inspired by a place mat at the International House of Pancakes, they decided to embark on an ambitious trip around the globe, starting in the People's Republic of China. At that point, China had been open to independent travelers for roughly ten minutes.

Armed only with the collected works of Nietsche, an astrological love guide, and an arsenal of bravado, the two friends plunged into the dusty streets of Shanghai. Unsurprisingly, they quickly found themselves in over their heads. As they ventured off the map deep into Chinese territory, they were stripped of everything familiar and forced to confront their limitations amid culture shock and government surveillance. What began as a journey full of humor, eroticism and enlightenment grew increasingly sinister-becoming a real-life international thriller that transformed them forever.

Backpacking is something I have always been interested in- although a world traveler I am not. I would rather live vicariously through someone elses exploits. This book allowed me to do that.

Traveling through China with Susie and Claire was thrilling, exciting, and at times very scary. Culture shock was something I experienced right along with them as the author described eastern hotels infested with cockroaches, hospitals with chickens running rampant amongst the patients, and public toilets consisting of only a trough to squat over.

Although I feel a couple of pictures would have added to the overall experience- as they do in any memoir- the duo's camera broke at the beginning of the trip, so I had no photos to relate to people's faces or famous Chinese locales, but Susan Jane Gilman's memory and powerful storyteller's "voice" helped flesh it out for me.

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven is an incredible memoir of her harrowing ordeal in a country light years away. 4/5 stars

The Leisure Seeker by Michael Zadoorian *Review*

John and Ella Robina have shared a wonderful life for more than fifty years. Now, in their eighties, Ella suffers from cancer and has chosen to stop treatment. John has Alzheimer's. Yearning for one last adventure, the self-proclaimed "down-on-their-luck geezers" kidnap themselves from the adult children and doctors who seem to run their lives to steal away from their home in suburban Detroit on a forbidden vacation of rediscovery.

With Ella as his vigilant copilot, John steers their '78 Leisure Seeker RV along the forgotten roads of Route 66 toward Disneyland in search of a past they're having a damned hard time remembering. Yet Ella is determined to prove that, when it comes to life, a person can go back for seconds- sneak a little extra time, grab a small portion more- even when everyone says you can't.

John and Ella have a beautiful and timeless love for each other. Even amid all John's confusion and Ella's "discomfort" they cling tightly to each other because they're all that they have.

Ella is determined to have one last vacation together while they can. Packing up their RV they head out on Route 66, a trip they have taken before in another lifetime. Determined to reach the end of the road, they plug on a few hours at a time before they get tired and have to stop for a rest.

John likes to stop at McDonalds. He loves burgers. But Ella, weak and nauseous from the cancer can't hardly stomach them anymore. Sandwiches and soup back at the campsite is more her thing.

When evening comes they drag out the old projector and watch slides of old trips on the side of the RV. John doesn't always remember his children's faces but he has to smile at the happiness of the family projected before him.

I recognized so much of my parents in this book, and sadly, even though my husband and I are in our early forties, much of ourselves too. This book tugged so tightly on my heartstrings I felt I was being pulled by some unseeable force.

Liberally sprinkled with humor over the many pratfalls, hijinks's, and mayhem they get into on the open road, The Leisure Seeker is a bittersweet love story of two wonderful people in the twilight of their lives. 5/5 stars

The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano *Review*

When Melody Grace McCartney was six-years-old, her parents walked in on a mafia hit and walked out as someone different. Entering the Witness Protection Program they left behind all they had- home, job, and normal lives for supposed security.

But a life on the lam is no life at all. Melody exists but is afraid to form bonds knowing that at any time those tenuous ties can be ripped away.

When she meets Johnny Bovaro, the son of the man she is hiding from and the one sent to kill her she is drawn to him and him to her. To him she is the girl who has dominated his family's every waking thought. To her, he is the man with whom she can finally be herself. And when he whispers her name- her real name- she falls in love.

The girl she used to be is a thought provoking novel about freedom and those who will reach for it at any cost. 4/5 stars