Category: From My Bookshelf – Lynn Willoughby

By Lynn Willoughby All This I Will Give to You ~ Dolores Redondo Like many books the title of the novel has more than one meaning and is of central significance to the story.  That is what intrigued me here. Manuel Ortigsa is a writer, living in Spain with his husband of fifteen years.  When the…

By Lynn Willoughby The Great Alone ~ Kristen Hannah Many, many vets of the Viet Nam war suffered from PTSD.  However, it was never labeled and they were expected to return home and pick up their lives where they left off – with their family, with their job. Ernt Allbright came home an enraged, volatile, hard…

By Lynn Willoughby Deep River Night ~ Patrick Lane This entire novel takes place in only forty eight hours.  The location – a remote sawmill community north of Kamloops.  It is mostly a community of men, where violence, complicity, past allegiances, alcoholism and minding your own business are the norm. The story appears to be…

By Lynn Willoughby And the Birds Rained Down ~ Jocelyne Saucier This little novel was a finalist in the 2015 Canada Reads competition.  It is unusual, it is heart breaking, it is very Canadian. A trio of elderly men are living out the remainder of their lives cut off from the outside world.  They each…

By Lynn Willoughby The Dry ~ Jane Harper This is a book that has sat on my shelf for some time.  Now that I’ve read it, I have ordered another by the same author.  It was a really good read. There are two story lines here – present day, where Aaron Folk, a Federal Agent,…

By Lynn Willoughby The Trouble With Goats and Sheep ~ Joanna Cannon This is a debut novel that begins “Something happened on a particular day.  I know it was that particular day because…” Not very original you say.  Not very catchy.  Not the enticing beginning I am used to in a book I find enjoyable.  But…

By Lynn Willoughby The Vengence of Mothers: The Journals of Margaret Kelly and Molly McGill Some time ago I reviewed “One Thousand White Women” by this same author.  It is literary fiction based on the story of Little Grey Wolf, head of the Cheyenne Sweet Medicine tribe, and his proposal to President Grant in 1874…

By Lynn Willoughby A Piece of the World ~ Christina Baker Kline The writing style in this novel is somewhat unique.  It spans decades, moves back and forth in time, but is always written in the present tense. The novel opens in 1939, at the farm in Maine, where Christina lives with her parents and…

By Lynn Willoughby The Women in the Castle ~ Jessica Shattuck I have read a lot of books about World War ll from the perspectives of soldiers, prisoners, widows, nurses, Generals, horses, the Japanese invasion of Alaska, internment camps, spies, Nazis and Jews.  But this book is different.  It is about a group of German…

By Lynn Willoughby The Girl From Krakow ~ Alex Rosenberg This World War ll story reminds us that while soldiers are fighting and dying at the front, civilians are fighting and dying at home.  It is a very relevant reminder in today’s world. Rita is attending university in Krakow as this novel begins – enjoying…

By Lynn Willoughby Blind Crescent ~ Michelle Berry Blind Crescent is a cul-de-sac where the houses are filled with a variety of quirky and dysfunctional families in many forms.  There is the widowed father with two teens, the man caring for his elderly and demanding parents, the huge agoraphobic man who’s only joy is eating,…

By Lynn Willoughby The Fire By Night ~ Teresa Messineo We follow two American military nurses during WWII.  Jo is assigned to North Africa, then Italy and finally to France.  As the army retreats, she is left behind to tend six very ill and wounded soldiers in a makeshift unit – a tent. She has…