These is my Words by Nancy Turner

Subtitle: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine 1881-1901  Arizona Territories
This is a work of fiction based on the authors family history.  At age 17, Sarah and her family leave New Mexico in a small wagon train headed to Arizona.  There are Indian raids, births, deaths and romance on the way.  They finally settle in the area around Tucson when Tucson was not much more than a fort and a small town.  Sarah is one tough independent woman and yet her life is still somewhat constrained by the expectations of women of the time.  Some journal entries are just a day or two apart. Other make larger leaps in time but the story is still easy to follow.  Hers was a life of adventure and danger and family life and all very believable.  I wish Turner had shared more of her real family story just for comparison.

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

The title was chosen for our wonderful library's Big Read.  I guess I was 1 of the few people in American who not only had not read the book but have never seen the movie.  I can't say that I have been a fan of the detective novel genre but it was a fun read.  Of course even though I have not seen the movie, Sam Spade sounded like Humphrey Bogart in my head.  Can't say he matched Hammett's description though - which I think is one of the things that distinguishes the detective novel from the mystery novel.  In this book, we get the kind of details of every individual that would allow us to pick them out in a line-up but little internal dialog or back story.  It's all about the plot - all action - made for the movies - a great escape.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

Mathilda and Lotto meet at a party in the final weeks of college and fall so madly in love that they are married a week later.  Lotto is disowned by his wealthy family because Mathilda is not the right kind of girl although in fact we know little about who she is at all.  It would appear that sex - anywhere, anytime, anyhow - is at the core of their relationship.  Their physical connection is rapturous but it seems to be just an extension of how much they truly care about each other.  Mathilda will do any kind of work to support Lotto's unfulfilled desire to become an actor.  She continues to support him when he becomes a wildly successful playwright.  They are the perfect couple and when Lotto dies suddenly in his 40's, Mathilda is devastated.  Or maybe none of that is true.  Our book group was drawn to this title because it was "a powerfully written exploration of the relationship between husbands and wives".  It is very sophisticated writing -  backwards and forwards in time - full of unsuspected revelations and powerful language - but I would be very surprised if anyone in the book group will identify with the relationship between Mathilda and Lotto - or be willing to own up to it :)

winter garden by Kristen Hannah

The Witson sisters were raised in a Washington apple orchard, Belle Nochi,  with a father they struggled to please and a mother who always remained a mystery.  Older daughter Meredith stayed behind to work for the family business while Nina traveled the world as a photographer.  But now Dad is dead and the last request he made of his daughters was to get to know their mother.   Anya Witson's story is buried in a fairy tale the girls have heard from early childhood.  As Anya begins to unbury the truth, the girls are forced to rethink almost all they thought they knew about both parents.
As much as I was able to predict the various discoveries, I was not prepared for the ending.

The 6th Extinction: an Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Through fossil records we have been able to identify five times in the history of the world when 50% or more of the known biology has been lost - an extinction.  The causes have all been natural events - ice ages, asteroids, great shifts in the surface of the earth - stuff like that.  We are currently in the middle of a sixth extinction and it is all on us - humans abusing mother earth.  In a highly readable naturalist style we travel with Kolbert while she visits the sites of a few of these observable losses and explores the likely causes one domino after another.  Add this to the list of wake up calls for the current environmental crisis.  The science is made accessible through humor and adventure but the warning is no less serious.

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

This memoir was first published in 1933 after Brittain was already an established author.  Based on her extensive diaries, she shares her experiences and observations of life during WWI.  As a member of the England's rising middle class, she looked forward to her years at Oxford.  She adored her older brother and his lively, intelligent group of friends, one of whom became her fiance. The war took it all away.  She left the university to serve as a nurse in the war where she contemplates the futility of it all on one hand and the idea of heroism on the other. Following the war, she rebuilds her life as a student, an author, a feminist, a pacifist and a speaker for the League of Nations.  She struggles with the notion that moving forward might make less of the people and memories left behind.  It has remained in print all these years because readers consider it the best window into the life of that generation - particularly the women - and what was lost by the war.  There a little bit more about the British educational system (begin on page 164 to skip the details) then I needed but interesting otherwise.  I haven't seen the movie but I fear a romanticized version of what was really a desperate time.

The Home Place by Carrie La Seur

Years ago Alma Terrebonne left bleak rural Montana to become a high priced lawyer in Seattle.  When she receives a call that her younger sister Vicky has been found frozen to death in Billings, she is drawn back into all the drama of the dysfunctional family she tried to escape.  As the facts seem to build that this was not an accidental death - family secrets, history, promises made, promises broken - all seem to be a part of solving the mystery surrounding Vicky's death.  Can we escape our roots?  Do we always carry our history inside even if we try to become wholly other?  In the end, do we all find our way home?

Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan

The adventurous tales spun by Robert Louis Stevenson could never have been a reality in his own medically fragile life.  Enter Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, an American mother of three who escapes her philandering husband by coming to Europe to study art.  Fanny and Louis meet in France following the tragic death of her youngest son.  She is ten years older than Louis.  He is a child of privilege; she has lived rough following her husband in his search for gold in the wild west.  They have little in common but their love is so strong that both take great risks to be together.  Fanny spends much of her life caring for the frequently ill Louis until a search for a healthier climate leads them to the sea and an entire new set of adventures begin.  Final stop Samoa where we discover a time when long distance travel meant weeks on the sea, where missionaries and mercenaries fought for control of distant parts of the world and Fanny fights to carve out a life of her own.  This was every bit as historically fascinating as Loving Frank with the added gift of both characters being people you still admire at the end.

Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

In her twenties, Cahalan was looking at a promising career as a journalist for the New York Post.  The possible undoing of that future began with a seizure. Then an inability to finish an assignment.  Then it was full blown paranoia.  Something was wrong.  Was she crazy?  All the brain tests seemed to indicate no problem with her brain.  Then one doctor decides to look outside the traditional medical boxes and identifies the rare condition of anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis.  But knowing what is wrong is just the beginning of a much longer journey in her "month of madness.