Do you keep track of the books you’ve read? How about the movies you watch? At my age, it’s getting harder to remember and I sure hate to waste my time only to realize half-way through that I’ve seen or read something before.
My 2023 record shows that I read 31 books last year. Of those, eight were research for the novel I’m currently writing. Three were nonfiction, falling into the category of self-help and all by the same author, Jennie Allen (Anything, Everything, and Nothing to Prove). One was a riveting memoir, Educated by Tara Westover. The remainder were fiction and mostly historical, my favorite both to read and write. I’m going to attempt to choose three favorites to tell you about, in no particular order.
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. I was thrilled to find this 486-page book at our local MCC thrift shop for only 85 cents. I was especially intrigued by the portion of this story that takes place near Shelbourne, Nova Scotia, where we have family friends.
Abducted as an 11-year-old child from her village in West
Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a string of slaves, Aminata
Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. Years later, she forges
her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and
registering her name in the historic Book of Negroes.
This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record
of freed loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States
for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was
steeped in an oppression all its own. Tears welled when I read the reactions of
people who had never before seen their name written down anywhere.
Aminata’s eventual return to Sierra Leone—passing ships carrying thousands of slaves bound for America—is an engrossing account of an obscure but important chapter in history that saw 1,200 former slaves embark on a harrowing back-to-Africa odyssey.
A Child for the Reich by Andie Newton. After her
husband, Josef, joins the Czech resistance, Anna Dankova does everything
possible to keep her daughter, Ema, safe. But when blonde haired, blue-eyed Ema
is ripped from her arms in the local marketplace by nurses dedicated to
Hitler’s cause, Anna is forced to go to new extremes to take back what the
Nazis stole from her.
A former actress, Anna goes undercover as a devoted German subject eager to prove her worth to the Reich. But getting close to Ema is one thing. Convincing her that the Germans are lying when they claim Anna stole her from her true parents is another.
The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kip by Sara
Brunsvold. Talented and ambitious, cub reporter Aidyn Kelley is ready for a
more serious assignment than the fluff pieces she’s been assigned. In her
eagerness, she pushes too hard, earning herself the menial task of writing an
obituary for an unremarkable woman who’s just entered hospice care.
But there’s more to Clara Kip than meets the eye. The spirited septuagenarian
may be dying, but she’s not quite ready to cash it in yet. Never one to shy
away from an assignment herself, she can see that God brought the young
reporter into her life for a reason. And if it’s a story Aidyn Kelley wants,
that’s just what Mrs. Kip will give her—but she’s going to have to work for it.
I highly recommend all three of these books and look forward to all the great ones I hope to read in 2024. What are you reading?
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