Books like Goldenseal

This book includes so many of my favorite things: an inn on the coast of Italy, a young innkeeper with outsized dreams, movie stars, an almost-romance, and a chance for rekindled love.

I clung to every page as the story moved back and forth from the 1960s to the present day, from the set of Cleopatra in Rome to Hollywood backlots. This book is like a vacation full of interesting people you want to know better, the kind of vacation you never want to end.

I read this novel just as I was starting to write in earnest, and before I fully understood how hard it is to pull off a feat of complex storytelling as elegantly as Walter does in this novel. It’s a marvel.

This book is a tour-de-force—a beautifully written story about Marian Graves, an Amelia Earhart-type adventurer during the prohibition era, and Hadley Baxter, the actress set to play her in a movie more than half a century later.

I really enjoyed how the two stories are in conversation with each other; both women determined to chart their own courses in very different eras and what they learn about themselves in the process. I was also struck by the intense obligation the actress feels to get this character right and the personal toll it takes as she discovers how similar their emotional lives may have been.

This book provided a true escape just when I needed it most, and I could have kept reading long after I turned the final page.

I have a pet peeve about books/authors who portray women in the early part of the 1900s as necessarily “old-fashioned,” hopelessly trapped by the rules of propriety set forth by society. This is not one of those books.

A wonderful romp behind the scenes of New York City theater in the 1940s, it follows a young Vivian who gleefully explores sex, relationships, and various unusual career paths thanks to her proximity to the bohemian art scene. This book is full of actors and actresses, some famous, others less so, and ultimately is about the source and endurance of true love outside the trappings of fame. A wonderful story.

Want to spend 10 glorious hours with Meryl Streep?

I loved her audiobook performance of Tom Lake. Her intonation mirrors the exact qualities that the main characters, who are actors, strive for: neither underacted nor overacted. Just genuine. 

Ann Patchett is a treasure, and in Tom Lake, she effortlessly navigates two timelines: one in which Lara tells her daughters about meeting famous actor Peter Duke in a long-ago play. These scenes are just as compelling as the flashbacks in which we learn about her time with Duke before he became a famous movie star.

It's a talent, the ability to tell a mostly ordinary life in a page-turning way. Her imagery is magnificent. Every scene is wondrous. Touching. So real.

Newman delicately explores the tumultuous journey of mothers going through the rigors of menopause and how this affects the way they deal with their adult children.

I thought she handled that awful sense of “what is happening to me?” while at the same time her main character needs to be the same woman she’s always been to keep her family together.

This is a beautiful story.

I wanted to read this because the title made me think, "Yes, I want to know what it's like to be in someone else's shoes." And...yes, this delivered. I really enjoyed the journey that Nisha and Sam go on, swapping places. Along with the other supporting female characters, what I read felt so feminist and empowering.

As a reader, I marveled at all of the subtle messages we were given about what it means to truly support other women. This all came in a very fun, entertaining, and page-turning book! Loved!

A contemporary romance written with lush prose and a transportive southern setting, this untraditional love story sticks in my mind. 

A wife and mother is stunned to learn that her first love is the father of her son’s new girlfriend. Their secret, unresolved past unravels as she assesses her present life and the choices she’s made. The temptation of the one that got away lurks in her mind as she navigates a precarious balance between family, obligation, and desire.  

I read this book over thirty years ago and despite not returning to it, count it as having a significant impact on my work. It is an emotionally charged and powerful book, and I remember being incredibly angry, and sad, and passionate for change. It introduced me to feminism and feminist literature. It shone the light on the need to hear women’s voices in the public realm.

Can a woman be true to herself and her ideals, even while living a lie?

I felt this was the intriguing question posed by the novel Younger, which inspired the popular TV series from Darren Starr starring Sutton Foster. I loved both the book and the series with its personable main character and charming premise.

Recently single Alice desperately needs a job. But nobody wants to hire a forty-something divorcee who’s been out of the workforce for years. With help from her best friend, youthful-looking Alice poses as a millennial and lands a job at a publishing house, where she thrives. Masquerading as a younger woman is filled with excitement and romance but also with peril, and I enjoyed the unexpected complications Alice encountered during her quest to reinvent herself. 

I just love this book. Again, it’s set against such an evocative landscape – this time in Western Australia. It tells the story of a tentative love affair between a reckless poacher and the wife of a wealthy landowner – and the inevitable fall-out. There’s even a soundtrack to go with it – Winton’s a musician too.

The writing’s so pitch-perfect that I had to keep stopping to scribble phrases down. It’s that good. Why is it about survival? As well as Luther Fox, the poacher, struggling to get over the tragedy of his past, the last third of the book focuses on his walkabout up north to Coronation Island, where he deliberately shipwrecks himself. Cue the wilderness: scavenging, hunting, sheltering. True, haunting, survival in its rawest sense as he battles to redemption.