Hard to Pick a Favorite

Once a year, I like to review for you a few of the books I’ve read in the past twelve months. Looking through my list of 47 for 2022, I see that nearly half were either for writing contests I was asked to judge or for research for my own (a few on war brides and several on the 1917 Halifax explosion). Of the remainder, I’ve chosen three to tell you about—all fiction. I’ll save my nonfiction favorites for another column.

Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan, may not appeal to you much if you’re not already a fan of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. If you are, you don’t want to miss it. In this clever story set in 1950, Margaret Devonshire (Megs) is a seventeen-year-old math student at Oxford University. When her beloved eight-year-old brother, George, asks Megs if Narnia is real, logical Megs tells him it’s simply a story for children. Homebound due to his illness, George remains fixated on his favorite books. He presses Megs to ask the author of the recently released novel, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” a question: “Where did Narnia come from?”

Despite her fear of approaching the famous author (a professor at her school), Megs soon finds herself taking tea with C.S. Lewis and his brother Warnie, begging them for answers.

Rather than directly telling her where Narnia came from, Lewis encourages Megs to form her own conclusion as he gradually tells her the little-known stories from his life that led to his inspiration. As she takes these stories home to George, the boy travels farther in his imagination than he ever could in real life.

Lewis’s answers reveal to Megs and her family many truths that science and math cannot. The gift she thought she was giving her brother—the story behind Narnia—turns out to be his gift to her instead—hope.

Until Leaves Fall in Paris by Sarah Sundin is only one of her many faith-based WWII stories, but readers are praising it as her best yet. I agree. When the Nazis march toward Paris, American ballerina Lucie Girard buys her favorite English-language bookstore to allow the Jewish owners to escape. Though the Nazis make it difficult for her to keep Green Leaf Books afloat, she must if she is to continue aiding the resistance by passing secret messages between the pages of her books.

Meanwhile, widower Paul Aubrey wants nothing more than to return to America with his little girl, but the US Army convinces him to keep his factory running and obtain military information from his German customers. As the war rages on, Paul offers his own resistance by sabotaging his product and hiding British airmen in his factory. But to carry out his mission, he must appear to support the occupation—which does not win him any sympathy when he meets Lucie in the bookstore. I loved how the action builds, the details resolve, and the characters grow.


The German Wife by Kelly Rimmer made my list over some other great books because of the way it portrays both sides of the story so completely. In a manner becoming increasingly popular in books and movies, this story jumps back and forth in time, which fascinates me both as a reader and a writer. 

Despite the title, the book is equally about a German woman and an American woman, following two very different lives. Sofie marries a German rocket scientist during World War II. Lizzie, who lived in the Texas panhandle during the dust bowl of the 1930s, marries an American rocket scientist. The two women unpleasantly collide in Huntsville, Alabama in the 1950s when their husbands work together for NASA. The power is all in the backstory.

Three great stories for your winter reading pleasure. Let me know what you think of them!