The Haunting Toll of a Missing Child

Posted on by Jan tramontano

When a child goes missing, an unfathomable nightmare begins for a family, the community and the police. Yet, we have a bizarre fascination with these events as evidenced by the upsurge in true crime media. It seems people can’t get enough of podcasts, TV shows, movies and books. Although some of this story has the feel of a whodunnit and what happened, at its core it's about the forever toll a child gone missing takes on families and neighbors. It weakens faith in home as a place of safety. What piqued my interest in this novel is how characters with different kinds of involvement weathered the loss.

The Emotional Depth of Historical Fiction in Ann Hood’s The Stolen Child

Posted on by Jan tramontano

The Stolen Child is a beautiful story of regret, forgiveness, and the pursuit of dreams.

Kate Quinn’s The Briar Club: A Novel of Women’s Lives during the Red Scare

Posted on by Jan tramontano

This novel is set in a time not yet popularized in historical novels. Kate Quinn, best known for her World War II novels, The Alice Network, The Rose Code and The Huntress, ventures into the McCarthy years in this intriguing novel. It is the time of the Red Scare, when people are losing jobs, fear for their safety, and face loss of reputation for their ideas and associations.

A Dual Narrative Journey

Posted on by Jan tramontano

There were many projects developed for young artists to keep them going under during the Depression. The WPA (Works Progress Administration) and the Federal Art Project (FAP) were created to keep struggling artists working. Artists that eventually came into their own such as Jackson Pollack, Willem DeKooning, Mark Rothko, and Dorothea Lange were kept afloat during this period. They were charged with creating work for public spaces. In this story, a young woman artist entered a contest to paint a mural for her local post office in New Jersey but need meant shifts and she was sent to a town she’d never heard of—Edenton, North Carolina—to paint their post office mural.

The Complex Dynamics of Friendship

Posted on by Jan tramontano

A truth that none of us think much about (or we’d go crazy) is how precarious our lives are or how they could be upended without warning. A tragedy and its blowback on everyone involved is the through line of this beautifully wrought book.

The Pearl Thief by Fiona McIntosh

Posted on by Jan tramontano

There have been many novels recently written about the Holocaust—its devastation, its unimaginable cruelty, its heroes, its far-reaching effects into the future. And unfortunately, many of the tropes of those times resonate in our world right now. I try not to read them. Family members who survived are each heroes to me in their own way and their lives were forever shaped by what they experienced. In its way, this novel demonstrates this.

The Road Not Taken

Posted on by Jan tramontano

Do you ever wonder about what your life might have looked like if you made one different decision? Or wonder if you were not afraid to take risk that might have changed everything? Perhaps, a first love didn't work out the way you'd hoped and you wonder what might have been... It's easy to fall down that rabbit hole but sometimes it's more satisfying to read somebody else's should have could have story. As I was reading this book, I thought about people and times in my own life who I hadn't thought about in years. It's good when a book gives you a look back into your own memories. As long as you don't spin out!

A Tale of Immigrant Resilience

Posted on by Jan tramontano

Newly released this week, this novel is a throwback to the kind of novel that made me an avid reader. It’s a Barbara Taylor Bradford Woman of Substance kind of book. The undaunted heroine rises from meager circumstances. With talent, grit, and ambition, she faces many obstacles but becomes successful and climbs the rungs of society. This is not a criticism. It is a reflection of the circumstances in the early twentieth century and Maisie McIntyre is such a character.

Laila Lalami’s Dream Hotel: A Cautionary Tale

Posted on by Jan tramontano

Sara Hussein is a woman whose life requires juggling multiple balls. She is an archivist, a mother of toddler twins, and is for the most part happily married. She had been having trouble sleeping. A working mother with twin babies. Who wouldn't welcome a harmless device to help deepen the little sleep she was getting. It was a no brainer and decided to have a device implanted that promised to improve and deepen her sleep. Dreamscape, a tech company, marketed this as a sleep aid but is, in fact, sharing its data. No one was more surprised than Sara.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Latest Novel: A Dream Count Unpacked

Posted on by Jan tramontano

In this latest novel by Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, she explores the idea of dream count, a backwards look at the past in the hope of arriving at a better future. If the past is filled with so much unrealized potential, how can the failed affairs of old be transformed?