Swimming Back to Trout River

 by Linda Rui Feng

This is a book set in China around the time of the Cultural Revolution. 

It starts with a young couple, Momo and Cassia, who have a handicapped child.  The woman decides to give her child to her in-laws to raise.  They love her and care for her very well.  First the grandfather makes her a wheeled cart that she can propel with sticks.  Eventually he makes her some prosthetic legs.  The father loves the girl and wants her to learn to play the violin but when he gives her a small violin and tries to teach her to play she throws it away.

We later learn that the girl's mother had loved a young man who died and she feels she was punished for this illicit affair by having the handicapped child.

Another character in the book is Dawn, a young chinese violinist, who has achieved acclaiim.

Momo has received permission to go to the U.S. to study.  He hopes to have his wife and daughter join him.  The daughter doesn't want to leave her grandparents.  His wife does make it to San Francisco but decides to stay there rather than join her husband.  She becomes a nanny for a little boy and has been told to only speak to him in Chinese.

Eventually Mom and Cassia develop relationships with other people in the U.S.

Momo has written Dawn telling her how impressed he is with her work and also telling her a bit about his life and his wish for his daughter to play the violin.

Dawn travels to the U.S. with a Chinese orchestra and then seeks asylum in the U.S.  She has left a man she reluctantly married behind in China.

In the end of the book Momo has learned how to drive so that he can drive to San Francisco to try to convince his wife to join him and for them to get their daughter to America with them.   The woman tells him she has a lover.  They go for a drive and are killed in a car accident.

The book ends with Dawn arriving at the daughter's home in China with her violin and a child-size violin.

It was an interesting story, sad to see how the mother didn't care for her own child but could bond with someone else's.  However, I think I would have to read it again to understand the relationship between Dawn and the family,

Book of Lost Names

 by Kristin Harmel

I have been reading so many books set in WWII that I was a bit reluctant to start this book.  But I am really glad I read it.  It was a fascinating story, really well told.

The story starts with an old woman in the U.S. learning about a project to return stolen books back to Jews.  One of the books identified is an old Christian text.  The woman decides she must go to Berlin to see the book.  Her son doesn't understand why she needs to go and convinces her not to go but while she tells him she won't go she does book a flight.

The story is set in Paris as the Nazis are rounding up Jews in that city.  A young woman works at the local library with her parents.  A Jewish friend of hers tells her that things are getting dangerous and she and her parents should make plans to leave. She tells her parents what she was told but they refuse to leave.  They don't realize how bad things will get.

One night a neighbour, who hates them because they are Jewish, asks for help babysitting her children while she goes to look after her sick mother.  The woman and her mother go to the woman's apartment.  While they are there the girl hears a noise in the hallway and witnesses her father being hauled away.  The girl and her other are devasted.

The mother doesn't want to leave Paris.  She hopes her husband will return.  But they find out that the neighbour who hated them has taken over their apartment. They manage to get fake travel documents which enable them to travel to a french town on the border of Switzerland.  The plan is to make their way to Switzerland.  However the girl is soon recruited, because of her artistic skills, to help make fake documents.  She works with a young Jewish man in a room in the Catholic Church.  The priest is part of a network of people in the town who are helping Jews, including orphaned children escape to Switzerland.  

The girl's mother is furious with her for 1) not trying to find the father 2) not wanting to escape to Switzerland, 3) associating with the Catholic priest.  She thinks hanging around the Catholics will cause her to lose her faith.  The girl does make it to a detention centre.  She is told her father was executed.

The girl continues to help forge documents, having to adjust as the officials get more astute and identifying forgeries.  She knows she is in danger but she feels she has to do what she can to help others.  The girl feels sad that Jewish children's names and identities are being erased through recreating identities for them.  She wants to preserve a record.  She and her forger partner devise a plan to put different marks above different letters in an old religious text in the church room they are working in.  The marks spell out the young children's names and there is also a coded message between the girl and the forger.

The young man who first warned her about danger in Paris shows up. As he is Jewish her mother is happy he is there and encourages her to marry him.  The girl however is falling for her fellow forger, a Christian.

Eventually the young forger decides he needs to be a fighter and help escort people across the border. The resistance people are ultimately identified by a traitor to their cause.  It turns out it was the young Jewish man the girl's mother wanted her to marry.  He did it to save his own life.  Many local people are killed because of him.

The young woman and the forger agreed to meet on the library steps in Paris after the war.  She returns to Paris and goes to the steps over many days.  When her lover doesn't show up she assumes he has died. The books from the church library are stolen and the church is burned.

The woman's mother dies but she is joyful when after the war she is reunited with her father who survived the camps. Her father dies shortly after.

One day she meets a young American soldier in Paris.  They have similar interests.  After a short time he asks her to marry him and she agrees as she has nothing left for her in France.

When the woman returns to Paris and goes to the museum that has the book that has the names, she is shocked to learn that another man has come to claim the book. It turns out to be her forger lover.

She decides it is time to tell her son about her life during the war.

This was a very well written story, with lots of suspense and great historical details.

The Vanishing Museum om the Rue Mistral

 by M.L. Longworth

I had to read something a little lighter after The Pull of the Stars so I picked up a little mystery.

The story is set in southern France near Marseilles.  The Musee Quentin-Savary in Aix-Aux-Provence

features some local ceramics and has just been bequeathed a painting by an important painter.  The Director of the museum and his assistant are totally devoted to the museum.

One night they are shocked to find that the entire museum has been cleaned out.  Everything but the reception desk is gone.

Around the same time the apartment of a recently deceased woman has been broken into and while there are valuable things there the only thing take is some ceramic dishes.

There is a judge and a police officer working on solving both cases.  They speculate the cases are connected but the items stolen don't seem to be of great value.  The police interview the museum officials and also one of the two residents of the building.  The man's family owns the building in which the museum is located and I believe he has some claim on the museum but can't remember how.  No one likes this man.  He is pompous and rude.  The police suspect he might have something to do with the theft.  The Directors of the museum are called to the town and it is learned that there was a proposal to merge the museum with one in Marseilles.

One of the humourous parts of the book is the judge.  He likes food and is always thinking about food.  When he finishes breakfast he is thinking about lunch and when he finishes lunch he is thinking about supper so there is lots of talk of french cuisine.

When the museum assistant goes to the museum one morning she finds her boss has been hit on the head and is unconscious and the owner of the museum in Marseilles that proposed the merger is dead. Things are getting serious.

The break in the case comes when one of the police sees a report about a rare Chinese vase selling for a high price at an auction, supposedly one of a set of two vases.  The police officer remembers seeing the vase in apartment of the man who is disliked.  Then we learn that the vase had been in the museum with flowers in it.  No one had realized it was valuable except the dislike man.  It also turns out that some of the ceramics in the museum could be valuable because they were part of a dinner service commissioned by Napoleon.  

The police decide to search the apartment of the other building tenant, who is a travelling salesman. There they discover some of the hidden ceramics.  The tenant is shocked to find police in his apartment when he returns home.  The disliked guy is arrested for the theft and the murder.

It was a light read but the setting in France made it interesting and the quirky officials added to the fun.

 

The Pull of the Stars

 by Emma Donoghue

This is the book about a maternity unit at a hospital in Ireland during the Spanish flu.  The book is set in a small room, with only three beds, where pregnant women with the flu are put for care.

The nurse is on the cusp of her 30th birthday.  She has a brother who returned from the war unable to speak.  The book covers various cases that come into the ward while the young nurse tries to cope with all the medical emergencies on her own.  A young girl, from a local orphanage has come in to help as a volunteer.  In the short time they are together they get very close.  The nurse is amazed at how curious the girl is and how quickly she learns.  

The book is about the flu but it is more about women's state in the world.  We find out that one of the women, who eventually dies, is malnourished and has had too many children so her health is frail.  She dies as does her unborn child.  A wealthy woman is in the ward.  Her baby is stillborn.  Another girl comes in, a ward at the same orphanage as the helper.  She is looked down upon because this is her second pregnancy out of wedlock.  We learn that the orphanage girls are basically slaves, having to work off their board at the orphanage.  Another young woman is obviously the victim of spousal abuse.  The nurse asks her if she has any family who will take her in.  When she says yes she advises the woman to leave her husband if he continues to abuse her.

The story also includes a female doctor who was charged with crimes for being part of a potential separatist group.  She is allowed to work because she is a doctor but eventually gets tracked down and arrested again.

This book was brilliantly written It was so intense, so brutal, it felt claustrophobic.  I don't think it is a book a man would want to read as it has so much graphic detail about women and pregnancy and complications.

As we are currently going through the Covid pandemic it made it even more difficult to read.

The Missing Treasures of Amy Ashton

 by Eleanor Ray

This story is about a young woman who has become a hoarder. She holds down a job in an office but only feels comfortable in her home which is stuffed with treasures she has found, little bird ornaments, cook books, cups, lighters (she doesn't smoke), wine bottles etc.  Amy has been devastated because her best friend and her boyfriend disappeared 11 years before.  She cannot accept that they would treat her like that.

One neighbour is concerned about her hoarding and has reported her to the local council.  Officials visit asking to check her house but she refuses to let them in.

New neighbours move in next door, a couple with two small boys.  The man and boys seem to take a liking to Amy but the woman doesn't like Amy nor her "step-sons".  While the boys are playing in Amy's back yard they break some pots she has stacked there.  She finds a ring in the debris, a ring she had shown to her boyfriend.  She wonders how it got there, did he buy it?  They why did he abandon her.  She also finds a waterlogged letter which appears to have been written by her best friend.

All this gets Amy on the hunt again to find out where her boyfriend and girlfriend are.  She talks to a band-mate of her boyfriend and a policeman who was the boyfriend of her best friend.  Then one day Amy is devastated that all her garden pots in her front yard have been smashed, no other neighbour has suffered vandalism.  Amy decides to resume contact with her girlfriend's mother.  While this is going on she being pursued romantically by a man in her office.  She finds out from her boss that he is supposedly married.  He claims he is separated,

Finally one day Amy's former girlfriend shows up at her door.  The woman had been contacted by her mother and told that Amy was still trying to find her.  Amy's girlfriend tells her that she was a victim of abuse by her cop boyfriend and that he killed Amy's boyfriend after seeing the friend and the boyfriend together in a park.  The boyfriend had been showing Amy's bestie a gift (the ring) he planned to give her for an engagement ring.

The policeman shows up at the same time as Amy's girlfriend is visiting.  He hits Amy and threatens her girlfriend.  Amy tips a box of her precious possessions on him.  He is injured not killed and the girlfriend tells what he did to Amy's boyfriend.   She is believed.  A picture that the girlfriend had sent to Amy is a clue to where the boyfriend is located.  The park is dug up, his body is found and the cop is arrested.

The book ends with Amy, with the help of her neighbours, included the man next door who has now lost his partner, trying to declutter her place.  She makes slow progress. The book ends with her and the neighbour kissing.  He will likely help her empty her place and heal her heart.

This was an okay story, I would call it a summer read.

The Sea Gate

 by Jane Johnson

This is the story about a young cancer survivor, Rebecca, who has given up her artist career while recuperating, she is living with a young potter.  When her mother dies Rebecca and her brother go to the mother's house to clean it out.  Rebecca finds a letter to Rebecca's mother from a cousin of her mother.  The woman is asking the mother to come help her urgently as she is running the risk of being put in a nursing home.

On a whim Rebecca decides to go find out about this cousin in Cornwall.  The house is empty, inhabited only by a rude mouth parrot.  The cousin is in the hospital because she had a fall.  Social services will not let her go home unless the house is renovated with an indoor bathroom and walk in shower on the main floor and a bedroom on the main floor.  The cousin asks Rebecca to undertake these repairs which Rebecca is eager to help wih.

However, when she goes to the bank she finds the cousin doesn't have much money but has been giving a sizeable sum to her housekeeper every month.  Rebecca gets these payments stopped and is threatened by the housekeeper's sons.

Rebecca asks her brother to lend her some money (from their mother's pending estate) to complete the work.

While this story is taking place in the present, part of the story goes back to WWII. We learn that Rebecca's father was killed in the war.  A woman and her daughter showed up at the house.  Rebecca's mother then left, supposedly for London.  Soon after the mystery woman leaves, leaving Rebecca with her troublesome 5 year old daughter, saying she has to go look after her dying mother.  Rebecca is about 15 at this time and struggles to look after herself and the little girl as neither woman provides her with  any money.

Two land girls had been living in the home but decide to leave when Rebecca is accused of lying and worse.  Rebecca saw a neighbour boy and an Austrian POW raping a local "simple" girl.  Rather than believing Rebecca the community seems to believe the story the men tell.  I found this very surprising and the fact that Rebecca's mother didn't send her any money to live on.

Rebecca rescues a parrot from a sailing ship that local women want to kill and cook.  He has a sailor's tongue.

One day the Austrian POW breaks into the house and tries to steal the keys for Rebecca's family car.  When she tries to stop him the man almost kills her.  She is saved when another POW, an Algerian kills the pow.  They drop the body down a tunnel from the cellar of the house which leads to the sea.  The Algerian tells her the Austrian killed the little "simple" girl.  Police come looking for both pow's.  Rebecca tells them she has not seen them and hides the Algerian in the cellar.  They eventually become lovers and one day the little girl sees them and threatens to tell on them

Rebecca realizes it will never be safe for her lover in England so she hires a ship to get him back home.  When her other finally returns from Morocco where she had been looking for her husband and stayed after he died, she finds Rebecca is pregnant and sends her away until the baby is born.  Rebecca is told the baby was still born.  Her other dies shortly after.

Then back in the present we learn that the young girl Rebecca was forced to look after was a love-child of her father.  The child is now the housekeeper and has been blackmailing Rebecca about the dead body and the black lover for years.  

While all this is going on Rebecca has become attracted to an Algerian man who has been doing the renovations to the house.  When Rebecca's boyfriend shows up she tries to send him away and is outraged when she finds out he is stealing art from the house.  She and the renovator lock the man in the celllar,  Her ex tries to escape down the tunnel and is buried in a landslide.  Rebecca calls the police and authorities and finds out her ex has a criminal record.  The skeleton of the Austrian is also found in the rubble so Rebecca has to explain what happened in the war.

We also find out that Rebecca's cousins child did not die.  Her mother paid to send it to the father in Algeria.  The father was tortured and died in prison for his political activism.  They find this out because the renovator is actually the cousin/nephew? of Rebecca's lover.  He arranges for Rebecca to speak to her daughter, who is still alive, by Skype.

Maybe things got tied up a little too neatly at the end but it was an interesting read.

The Girl in His Shadow

 by Audrey Blake

It is mid-nineteenth century London.  A London surgeon, who does a lot of free work with the poor finds a young girl barely alive, suffering from a plague, the rest of her family has died from the disease.  He decides to bring her home much to the chagrin of his housekeeper.

The housekeeper eventually warms to the girl, treating her as a daughter.  The doctor is a surgeon but also a scientist.  He pays gravediggers to bring him corpses so he can study them and learn more about diseases.

As the girl grows she assists the doctor in his work in his clinic as well as his scientific inquiries.  She basically runs his office and keeps his lab clean.  She also draws sketches which the doctor often includes in his papers.  The girl also does some simple procedures like stitches or removing stitches.

The doctor is highly regarded in the medical community but there is another surgeon, a rival, who thinks he is dangerous and often criticizes his experimentation.

One day the girl is shocked and dismayed to find another doctor arrive on the premises as an Intern to the surgeon.  She feels she will not longer have the freedom and opportunities she had before as women are forbidden to practice medicine.

Eventually the young doctor does find out what she does and what she knows, he is shocked and wonders if he should report the doctor but he is loyal to the doctor.

Eventually a case occurs in which the older doctor is put under investigation.  To "protect" the doctor the young girl admits she is the one that did the surgery on a twisted bowel.  Up to this point surgery on the abdomen has been forbidden.

The older doctor's reputation is damaged, the young doctor's fiancee cancels their engagement.  The young girl is offered the opportunity to go to Italy and be trained as a surgeon by an Italian doctor.  She is in love with the young doctor but asks him to wait for her.

It was an interesting story, if the ending was somewhat predictable.