I love
character-driven stories. I found that, and more, in the Christian historical novel
For A Noble Purpose.
The story revolves around a group crossing the American
frontier by wagon train in the 1850s. They hope to build a utopian community in
the Pacific Northwest.
The story evolves into a metaphor for life’s journey. Prepare
to be surprised, and I was. At first, I was skeptical about allusions to the Book of
Tobit and about the “gifts” of some characters. I’m glad I kept reading. Good writing/storytelling/characters, and unexpected twists combine into a delightful whole. Also, I appreciate
novels that include romantic elements, and this one delivers.
It’s easy to see
why this book won 1st place in the Catholic Novels Category at the
2023 Catholic Media Awards.
Characters leap off
the page in this novel based on a true crime that
occurred in 1920s Prohibition-era New York City. I don’t often read true-crime
novels, but this one is exceptional.
The story is a fictional telling of the
aftermath of a scandalous crime: the murder of a Broadway party girl. The story’s
point of view rotates among several people drawn into the crime’s orbit. The
viewpoints offer a lens on how people of various social classes, occupations,
races, and ethnicities maneuvered through—and were affected by—the era’s rules,
restrictions, prejudices, and biases.
The leading voice is based on a real-life
female trailblazing journalist. As a retired journalist, I appreciated the
spotlight on her in this page-turner.
New York in the Roaring Twenties-a riveting true-crime novel, based on one of the most notorious unsolved murders of the era, where power, politics, and secrets conspire to bury the truth.
Manhattan, 1923. Scandalous flapper Dot King is found dead in her Midtown apartment, a bottle of chloroform beside her and a fortune in jewels missing. Dot's headline-making murder grips the city. It also draws a clutch of lovers, parasites, and justice seekers into one of the city's most mesmerizing mysteries.
Among them: Daily News crime reporter Julia Harpman, chasing the story while navigating a male-dominated industry; righteous NYPD detective…
Emily Dickinson’s
Gardening Life adds new growth to familiar portraits of the iconic poet.
Eccentric she surely was. But a more complete picture of her emerges from this
book than from any Dickinson biography I’ve paged through.
McDowell allows
Dickinson’s life story, actions, words, and writing to provide biographical
insights through a lens of gardening activities and household chores. Dickinson’s
love of gardens and plants is well known. She engaged in the hobby year-round. Like
plants need sunlight and air to survive, so did the woman who emerges from
these pages. She becomes less the housebound recluse hiding in her bedroom, and
more a real person engaging with the world on her own terms.
"A visual treat as well as a literary one...for gardeners and garden lovers, connoisseurs of botanical illustration, and those who seek a deeper understanding of the life and work of Emily Dickinson." -The Wall Street Journal Emily Dickinson was a keen observer of the natural world, but less well known is the fact that she was also an avid gardener-sending fresh bouquets to friends, including pressed flowers in her letters, and studying botany at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke. At her family home, she tended both a small glass conservatory and a flower garden. In Emily Dickinson's Gardening Life, award-winning…
At Home in Persimmon Hollow is the first book in a series chronicling love and life in a small fictional town in frontier Florida.
In 1886, the devout Agnes is forced to leave - for her own safety - the Catholic convent-orphanage where she grew up. With nothing but her faith to sustain her, she begins her new life as a teacher in Persimmon Hollow. She discovers a wild and beautiful new landscape and a town filled with upright people. They include the difficult but handsome Seth, a man whose heart has been hardened to God after a terrible loss.
As Agnes starts to put down roots and establishes a fragile bond with Seth, danger strikes. Destructive men from both their pasts arrive in town. Will Agnes finally escape her past and embrace a bright new future?
