Book cover of What the Living Do

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1 author picked What the Living Do as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Brett—stalled in Barrie, Ontario on her tentative way toward whatever the rest of her life might be—keeps her head down and her shoulders taut, clearing brush and dead animals from rural roadsides and relieving her stresses with her much younger musician boyfriend. Then one day there’s bleeding.

Susan Wadds’ novel What the Living Do tracks Brett’s life as she wrestles with an unexpected diagnosis, an unsettling past, and an uncertain future. Its stunningly good prose embeds us in Brett’s sensory world (her doctor “wiggles his fingers into blue stretchy gloves and lets the cuffs snap”) and in the fraught dynamics…

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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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