Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred by Octavia Butler is an outstanding sci-fi novel published in 1979. It has been around a long time but this is the first time I've read it. The story is about Dana, a black woman who is transported back in time to save the life of one of her ancestors. This is complicated because the ancestor is a young, white boy, the son of a plantation owner in the Antebellum South. Dana does not have papers designating her as a freed slave so she has some extreme problems. These problems are sometimes compounded and sometimes alleviated by the fact that she is a highly educated woman in a time and place when most blacks were prevented from learning to read.

Dana goes back and forth between her ancestor's time and her own. She may spend months in the past then return to find she's only been gone for a few days. Yet anything that happens to her physically in either time period remains, including scars from a brutal whipping.

In many ways the book reminded me of the song from South Pacific with the line, “You've got to be taught to hate and fear...” For this reason this book is relevant to the discussions we are having today about systemic racism. Butler presents us readers with people who were not born filled with hatred but instead conformed to the horrible norms of the day. This is true among both the whites and blacks in her book. Even Dana is changed somewhat after living in a society where slavery is accepted.

Apparently, Kindred is in pre-production for an FX series. That should be great but I recommend reading the book first.

The Garden of Happy Endings by Barbara O’Neal

I read The Garden of Happy Endings because it was recommended to me by Goodreads. I suppose that was because I had read and enjoyed a couple of novels by Gail Godwin: Father Melancholy's Daughter and Evensong. All three of these books treat priests/ministers in a realistic manner, exposing their flaws but also telling of their struggles to make the world a better place.

The Garden of Happy Endings has a few elements that touch on the mystical side of Christianity: angels, ghosts (human and animal) and callings but that isn't the core of the book. It's about living one's life with faith. That includes losing faith when tragedy or personal disappointment strikes. It also includes having faith fill a void created by loss.

This novel is listed in three categories on Amazon: Women's Divorce Fiction, Sisters Fiction and Women's Sagas. The latter two are obvious. The first less so because there is no actual divorce in the plot. There are, however, three women who split from their partners for different reasons and react to their separations in different ways.

The male characters in the novel are less developed than the females, which makes sense since the book is written from the points of view of the three women: Elsa (a minister going through a faith crisis), Tamsin (Elsa's sister) and Alexa (Tamsin's daughter). They all have stories worth telling.

I recommend this book for anyone looking for a good story of faith and its power to help deal with tragedy and broken relationships.

 

To the Bones by Valerie Nieman combines the fun of a sci-fi/fantasy novel with a serious critique of greed in business, especially when that greed leads to environmental harm. It is set in a small, coal mining town in West Virginia. The coal industry is waning, but the business leaders in charge have found a way to keep exploiting the people and the land surrounding them.

Darrick, a mild-mannered government auditor, traveling alone, goes off the highway for gas and ends up in a pile of human bones in what appears to be a small cave but is actually a mine crack. He's been beaten, has a serious injury to his head and has been left for dead. He still manages to climb out of the hole. He can't remember what happened to him, so he limps off seeking help. Darrick is taken in by a strong willed woman named Lourana who has her own problems. Lourana's adult daughter, Dreama, is missing and Dreama is not the sort of woman to lose contact with her mother unless she's in serious trouble.

I loved the characters in this story, especially Louranna. She's a working class woman who manages a sweepstakes parlor. She knows taking in a stranger could be dangerous, but she helps Darrick because she feels it is the right thing to do. Darrick is also interesting as he learns he has a lot more going for him than he first realized. Their relationship is the core of the novel. The secondary characters are also well developed from the townspeople who think they've seen a Zombie to an ex detective who has been relegated to cleaning offices.

The sci-fi/fantasy aspect to the novel centers on abilities Darrick has and on abilities members of the wealthy Kavanagh family have. The progress Darrick makes to understand and use his skills for good is a major part of the plot, but the growth in his confidence is just as important.

To the Bones is excellently written by Valerie Nieman. I listened to the audio version read by Eric Fritzius. He also did a wonderful job. The story helped shorten a long trip I took.

Mission: Angola by Randall Krzak

If you are a fan of action thrillers, you should give Mission: Angola (Xavier Sear Thriller Book 1) a read. This novel by Randall Krzak is the story of an ex-CIA agent who has been recruited to rescue a kidnapping victim from a camp in the heart of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The victim is the son of an Angolan cabinet minister and has dedicated his life to serving desperate people in remote villages in Angola. Parts of the story are set in both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola with the action crossing the border a number of times.

Randall Krzak served in the U.S. Army in Africa, among other places. This shows in his writing. He's a master of detail from the jungle camps to the cities. He includes descriptions of local food I found fascinating. He also knows military weapons and other gear very well.

A good action thriller needs a strong villain. This book has a number of them. Jonah Alimasi, the leader of the group that kidnapped Doctor Mwanga is the worst, but there are plenty of others including Russian agents and locals willing to betray just about everyone they know. There is a great deal of violence in Mission: Angola, which is why I recommend it to fans of that genre.

Evensong by Gail Godwin is a beautifully written, slow-moving novel. It is a book for readers who want to delve deep into the lives of realistic characters. This book is the sequel to Father Melancholy's Daughter which is the story of the daughter of an Episcopalian priest. In Evensong, Margaret has followed her now deceased father into a career as a priest. She has married an older man, Adrian, who was a friend of her father's and still idolizes the man. Daddy issues are a main theme throughout this novel, not only through Margaret, whose was raised by her father after her mother abandoned the family, but also through her husband, who was abandoned by his parents, and Chase, a young, troubled teenager whom Margaret and Adrian take into their home after he had difficulties in foster care.

As with Father Melancholy's Daughter, I loved the picture this novel paints of life inside a church. The people are real. Margaret deals with different opinions and personality issues as she works to create a safe environment for ritual and worship. She is also on-call at all hours for people who need religious counseling. We see the personal side of Margaret's life. There are issues with her marriage stemming from her husband's insecurities as well as an incident in her own history that should have been private but isn't.

One odd thing about this novel is that although it is a slow story it gets exciting as everything wraps up at the end. I would have preferred a an ending that fit the style of the rest of the book more appropriately but other than that Evensong is a great read.

Sunflower Sisters by Martha Hall Kelly

 

Sunflower Sisters by Martha Hall Kelly is the third book in her series about stories of women who lived during major American wars. These books are historical fiction inspired by real characters. The people surrounding the principal characters are a mixture of historic figures and fictional people. Sunflower Sisters has small roles for Frederick Law Olmsted and Abraham Lincoln among others.

The books do not have to be read in order. In fact, they go back in time so what happens in the preceding books actually occurs later. I've read Lilac Girls, the first in the series, but have not yet read the second, Lost Roses. Lilac Girls is set during World War Two. Lost Roses is set during World War One and Sunflower Sisters is set during the American Civil War.

Each book follows three women born into situations very different from each other. In Sunflower Sisters: Georgeanna Woolsey is an abolitionist from New York City who becomes a wartime nurse, Jemma is a slave on a tobacco plantation in Maryland and Ann-May Wilson is the woman who controls that plantation and owns Jemma. The story moves from plantations in Maryland to the luxurious buildings in New York and Washington where high society events take place and to the battlefield in Gettysburg.

The brutalities of war and of slavery are shown, but the book also focuses on women's rights. Georgeanna runs into problems as she attempts to become a nurse. Almost all of the nurses at that time were men who saw female nurses as threats to their jobs. I did not know anything about the history of female nurses in America, so this subplot was especially interesting to me. The novel also covers issues such as addiction and infidelity through the character of Ann-May.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara and the Sun is the story of an artificial friend or “AF” as she is referred to in the novel. She is a sophisticated, animated doll with artificial intelligence brought to a level as close to a human as possible—all in a toy for a teenager. The story is told entirely from her point of view. Klara is unusual among the AFs because she can observe and evaluate events that are happening around her on a level that has never been seen before, at least not by the manager of the store that sold her.

Klara sees things we can recognize, but she sees them with the eyes of someone who is totally naive. Most of the time we readers end up shaking our heads and laughing at how Klara thinks in such an odd way. But as the novel goes on some of Klara's observations turn out to be different than what we expected. This lends an interesting, spiritual slant to the novel.

There is also a subplot in Klara and the Sun concerning the people surrounding Klara. This technologically enlightened society has come up with a new form of prejudice. Although this other plot does not directly affect AFs, it is woven into Klara's story in a way that demonstrates the level of empathy Klara has reached.

The humans in the story are well portrayed. Although we see them all through Klara's eyes, we get to know their strengths and their flaws. Josie, the teenager who chooses Klara, is loyal and fun, but she has her moments when she gets jealous or argumentative. Josie is suffering from a health issue that might cause her death. The people around her such as Rick, her best friend, and Chrissie, her mother, are all impacted by Josie's health and show their concern in different ways. Paul, Josie's father, shows up later in the novel and also demonstrates his love for Josie in an entirely different way. The minor characters, such as Henry Capaldi, a portrait artist, are also believable and unique. The relationships between these characters keep the story going every bit as much as Klara's ability to observe and learn.

This is the most imaginative novel I've read since Kazuo Ishiguro's other book, Never Let Me Go. It's SyFy but I would recommend it to anyone who likes a good novel.