Full disclosure: author Kate Woodworth and I shared our (very similar) manuscripts before they were accepted by publishers. Which is why I can now say, without any embarrassment, that I'm quite jealous of what she produced! Set on an island in Penobscot Bay, Kate has created a tiny independent community that also somehow serves as a metaphor for the entire world. Through a very specific and optimistic lens, she shows us realistic approaches to development, climate change—and cults.
On Little Great Island, climate change is disrupting both life and love
After offending the powerful pastor of a cult, Mari McGavin has to flee with her six-year-old son. With no money and no place else to go, she returns to the tiny Maine island where she grew up-a place she swore she'd never see again. There Mari runs into her lifelong friend Harry Richardson, one of the island's summer residents, now back himself to sell his family's summer home. Mari and Harry's lives intertwine once again, setting off a chain of events as unexpected and life altering as the…
While West with Giraffes covers the challenges of crossing a Depression-era USA towing two very tall passengers, the larger theme is animal grace and how it can change and improve humans. To enrich what could’ve been a rather dull travelogue, author and former travel writer Lynda Rutledge also overlaid a fictional love story—and wove in many imagined details well beyond the scope of various newspaper stories and memoirs.
When I read this book, I didn’t know anything about the giraffes and their history; it’s only after I finished, not wanting to let them go, that I dug into what was actually “true” and what only took place between my ears. The wonderful thing about fiction is that it can bring to life stories we would never hear otherwise… and the writing didn’t show any gaps between what was gleaned from a newspaper and what came solely from Rutledge’s imagination.
An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America.
"Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes..."
Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.
It's 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day…
Weeks after reading the final page of Lidija Hilje’s debut novel, I’m still wondering what her characters are doing now. From first words to last, I found myself completely immersed in a place I’ve always wanted to visit, the Croatian coastline; an amazing achievement for an author writing in her second language.
The novel is structured as a series of flashbacks interspersed with “now” (though the exact year is unspecified). This slow but steady drip of memories shows how Vlaho and Ivona met, fell in love, and then divorced. Meanwhile, scenes set in the present day drip with regrets. “I can’t remember the last time someone said I had potential,” we read at the end of the first chapter. “But the thing about potential is that it doesn’t go away. If you fail to realize it, you don’t simply lose it. Instead, it sediments inside you, like tar or abestos, slowly releasing its poison.”
Spanning twenty years and one life-altering summer in Croatia, Slanting Towards the Sea is at once an unforgettable love story and a powerful exploration of what it means to come of age in a country younger than oneself.
Ivona divorced the love of her life, Vlaho, a decade ago. They met as students at the turn of the millennium, when newly democratic Croatia was alive with hope and promise. But the challenges of living in a burgeoning country extinguished Ivona's dreams one after another—and a devastating secret forced her to set him free.
Loner James Malloy is a ferry captain—or used to be, until he was unceremoniously fired and replaced by Courtney Farris. Now, instead of piloting Brenton Island’s daily lifeline to the glitzy docks of Newport, Rhode Island, James spends his days beached, bitter, and bored.
When he discovers a private golf course staked out across wilderness sacred to his dying best friend, a Narragansett Indian, James is determined to stop such “improvements.” But despite Brenton’s nickname as “Cooperation Island,” he’s used to working solo. To keep rocky bluffs, historic trees, and ocean shoreline open to all, he’ll have to learn to work with other islanders—including Captain Courtney, who might just morph from irritant to irresistible once James learns a secret that’s been kept from him for years.
This salt-sprayed fourth novel by 2004 Olympic Sailor Carol Newman Cronin celebrates wilderness and water, open space and open-mindedness, and the redemptive power of neighborly cooperation.
