68 Books Like Braver

This was one of the first archaeology books I was assigned when I started studying archaeology, and I only appreciate it more and more with time. I don’t think there is any book the captures so well the fact that real archaeologists actually learn much more from everyday, mundane objects—rather than from the monuments and treasures that archaeology in the movies is all about. 

I still remember, too, the moment this book made it ‘click’ for me that archaeology often reveals secrets that contradict the written record. A plantation owner might say, for instance, that they designed and built their house, but they can’t hide the existence of the front porch and other traces of African architectural and construction techniques.

My copy of this book is riddled with nearly 20-year-old post-it notes, each one representing an epiphany for a budding archaeologist just ahead of her first summer of excavation.

If you like reading fast action and involved mysteries, you’ll enjoy Patricia Cromwell’s novel, Isle of Dogs. This action-packed story delves into the historical plots surrounding a small island off the coast of Virginia, where it is said ancestors of long-ago pirates reside, and to this day a sunken treasure remains at the bottom of the sea off their shores. The Governor of Virginia decides to build speed bumps on the small island where the preferred mode of transportation is golf carts. Disarrays begin, so State Trooper Andy Brazel is assigned to investigate and discovers a gang’s intentions to raid the island in search of the treasure.

This novel traces the coming of age of the only child, a daughter, of a very traditional Episcopal priest. He struggles with depression, a failed marriage, and his work. She struggles to keep up her father’s spirits and tend to his household, as well as with the abandonment of them by her mother and with the question of who she shall be when she isn’t just tending to her dad. Ultimately, she arrives at a calling of her own. It’s a warm-hearted, leisurely novel that also can be quite comical about church people and human interaction of all kinds, but also treats faith seriously. (There’s also a good sequel that takes us into her ministry, Evensong.)     

I’d read anything Kate Clayborn writes but Georgie is truly special.

She’s a searching soul, who can’t seem to find her place and will do anything to jumpstart her life. When she accidentally ends up staying at home with a family friend, Levi Fanning, they start to put each others’ pieces back together. This book is so emotional and beautiful and really doesn’t give easy answers where other books would. I love it if you need a tender, internal book. 

Who doesn’t love a cookbook that includes A Thermos of Hot Virginia Country-Style Beef Consommé as the first item on a picnic list?

The Taste of Country Cooking is a cookbook and narrative of life in Freetown, Virginia where Lewis grew up. I feel comforted and assured reading Lewis’ stories and recipes. Here is an expert relating a way of life where eating is seasonal, healthful, and communal.

Recipes are directions on how to prepare and serve food, sure, they’re also medicinal formulas (lemonade is technically medicinal!), ethnobotanical records, and historical documents intimately tied to how humans all over the world live lives. I am a sucker for cookbooks tied to seasons, foodways, and history.

Lewis’ recipes are presented seasonally and organized into menus linked to events: Emancipation Day Dinner, A Cool Evening Supper, Morning-After-Hog-Butchering Breakfast. Food is what we eat but also who we are.

The first novel in the Old Town Antiques Mystery series is a cozy mystery with a delightful setting, a bit of romance, and a fifty-something main character who dives in to find a killer after making a late life career change.

When Camille Benson hears an antique shop that previously belonged to her parents is being sold by its unlikable current owner, Roberto, she decides buy the store. But Camille doesn’t even have time to revitalize the business before she discovers Roberto’s dead body, laying in the closed shop.

From there, the mystery takes off with loads of fun characters and enough trouble to make Camille fear she may not be able to untangle it all in time to save the business. 

This book spoke to me.

A group of women who seemingly had it all discover that there is more to life than the imposed dream of home, family, and a well-appointed kitchen. I really enjoyed the premise that a book club can become a place where one doesn’t just offer polite reviews of the text but a space for the exploration of ideas.

These women were on the periphery of social upheaval and could have very easily submerged themselves into suburban obscurity. But a book awakens them, shakes them up, spurs them on, and ultimately shows them the way to voice a more genuine version of themselves. I love the humour, the realism, the connection, and the growing realisation that together, women can really change the world.

I loved The Waltons, the closeness of the family, and how they solved typical family squabbles. As an adult, I watched every episode again with my kids, so I was thrilled when I actually met The Homecoming author Earl Hamner, Jr. (the real John-Boy Walton/Clay-Boy Spencer) in an online writers’ group way back when the internet was first invented. We became great online friends. His John-Boy character inspired the character in my book, a good-hearted teen who, despite living in modern times, traverses his small southern town on a horse, just as John-Boy rode Blue, his mule.

The death toll of the Civil War was horrendous, the list of the wounded? Endless. Medical schools did not exist; doctor trained their assistants. There were no emergency rooms, no hospitals, no triage, and certainly no female nurses to care for those bleeding male bodies. In many respects, the medical profession was born on Civil War battlefields with the brave women who ventured among the dead and dying to staunch the flow of blood. So, who were the women who emerged from their sheltered lives to care for wounded soldiers in the Northern army? I wrote about one of them—Nellie Chase—but I thought she was an exception. These stories of the women who joined the Northern war effort expanded my knowledge beyond my wildest expectations.

You don’t necessarily have to like an author to admire their grasp of the subject matter and few writers have a better slab-side manner than Cornwell. She knows her stuff and you can perhaps forgive her the smartarsery that she can’t resist. But she does go out of her way to give the victims and their families closure.