Lincoln Highway

 by Amor Towles

Boy can this author ever write!! I read his book a Gentleman in Moscow a few years ago and really enjoyed it.  This is a very big book, almost 600 pages, I was not looking forward to a big, long book. However, this book was worth it!

It is the story of a young man, who has been in a juvenile detention facility, because he accidentally killed another boy.  The young man's mother left the family years ago and his father died of cancer while he was serving his sentence.  The farmer next door and his daughter were looking after the boy's 8 year old brother until he was released.  The father was not a successful farmer so the family farm is being foreclosed.

When the young man (Emmett) returns he decides their is not point in staying around, there are too many hard feelings against him in the community.  His young brother (Billy) wants them to go to San Francisco because that was where the last postcard they got from their mother was from.

The young man is shocked to find out that two of the inmates of the prison stowed away in the warden's car and are now at his home.  He offers to drive them to the nearest train station but things go off the rails and the other inmates end up taking his car and heading to New York.  In taking the car they also took all the money Emmett's father set aside for him. So penniless, Emmett and Billy jump on an east bound train.  

Along the way they meet some people who help them and also some who want to hurt them or steal from them.  Billy is constantly reading a book about Heroes.  When he meets a black man named Ulysses who helps and protects him he is convinced that Ulysses is the modern reincarnation of the Greek Hero.  Sally, the girl from the neighbouring farm rescues the boys when their car is stolen.  Later she manages to find them in New York.  In the end she insists that she will go with them rather than go home.  She is sick and tired of cooking and cleaning for her father, especially after he bought the boy's farm at a good price as it was being foreclosed on.

The book has many twists, turns and surprises, almost one in every chapter. Eventually the boys do meet up with the two escapees, Woolly and Duchess and more adventures ensue as Duchess tries to settle some scores along the way.  In the story Woolly is not quite the brightest light in the universe.  He was jailed because of some pranks he did that went wrong.  He is now a drug addict. Duchess, who is the really evil, manipulative, one with no conscience at all was actually framed by his own father.  While he was innocent of the crime he was convicted of he has turned out to be very bad.

The goal of the criminals is to get to New York to raid Woolly's grandfather's safe at a lake cabin (his family was very wealthy).  They make it to cabin and Billy is able to figure out the combination for the safe.  Woolly commits suicide leaving a note saying he leaves the money to the two brothers and to Duchess.  Emmett is so tired of Duchess and all the trouble he has caused them that he knocks him out, then puts him and his share of the money in a boat at the property.  When Duchess comes to he finds the boat is filling with water.  It sounds like he doesn't make it as he can't swim.  Something of a just end for this very bad character.

This book had incredible stories, characters and twists to the plot.  It was a great read.

The Maid

 by Nita Prose

This is the story of a maid at a large hotel.  She appears to have some level of autism, judging from her  thought processes and behaviour.  She is very lonely as her grandmother who raised her died about a year ago.  She is struggling to make ends meet because a beau she had cleaned out all hers and her grandmother's savings.

She is a hard worker and prides herself on making rooms very clean.  She has a crush on the bartender and thinks he likes her.  She helps out a dishwasher in the kitchen by giving him the key to rooms that are empty as she has been told he is homeless.  She then cleans the rooms the next morning before they can be booked out.  This is a bit fishy, how  would she know the room wouldn't be rented out later in the day?  One day she enters one of the rooms to find the bartender, two big thugs and the dishwasher in the room.  She is puzzled but they tell her everything is okay so she heads on her way.

She befriends the trophy wife of one of the wealthy couples that frequently stay at the hotel.  The husband is rude and abusive of his wife.  The wife confides in the Maid and the maid thinks they have become friends.  One day she goes back to the couple's room to finish cleaning the bathroom and finds the husband dead on the bed.  She reports this to the office and is brought in for questioning.  Her behaviour confounds the police and she doesn't tell them everything as she wants to protect the wife.

Later the wife shows up at her apartment and asks her to retrieve a gun she had stored in the ceiling in the bathroom.  The Maid, Molly, agrees to do this and puts the gun in her vaccuum cleaner. Molly confides this information to the bartender who she thinks has a crush on her. Shortly after the police show up at her apartment and arrest her for the murder of the rich man.  They tell her they found the gun in her vaccuum cleaner and found drugs in her locker.

The doorman of the hotel, and his daughter who is a lawyer, seek to defend the maid.  Eventually she tells the police about the activities of the bartender and the dishwasher.  It turns out the bartender had been blackmailing the dishwasher into helping them move drugs.  The rich man was also involved in this drug business.

Molly still feels sorry for the trophy wife and helps her leave the building.  It turns out the trophy wife was having an affair with the bartender and planned to leave her husband, going with the bartender to a property in the caribbean. It turns out the bartender was using both women.  He is eventually arrested for the drug dealing and murder of the rich man.  Molly later learns that it was actually the rich man's ex wife who murdered him but she doesn't share this information with anyone.

It was an interesting mystery story.

Hana Khan Carries On

 This book is described as a romcom, but it is a bit more than that.

It is about a young Muslim woman in Toronto.  Her father is an invalid as a result of a traffic accident, her mother is running a not very successful Halal restaurant. Hana works there part time but her dream is to get into radio.  She has a job as an Intern at a radio station.

In addition to this Hana has created a blog about her life and experiences.  She remains anonymous on the blog.  She has one follower with who she has developed a chat relationship.  They share their challenges with each other and give advice to each other.

Hana is devastated to find out that a fancy new Halal restaurant is going to open up in the neighbourhood and will likely put her mother's restaurant out of busines.  While this is going on Hana's pregnant sister who had also been helping out at the restaurant is told to take bed rest.  An aunt arrives from India and takes over Hana's room.  A male cousin also arrives to help out at the restaurant.

Hana meets the father and son who are opening the rival restaurant, they are very rude and cutthroat.  She decides to create online accounts and go on social media to spread negative rumours about the new restaurant. 

Hana feels her radio boss doesn't want to listen to her ideas and that she is being sabotaged by another intern so she quits her intern job.

As time goes by Hana finds she is attracted to the young man from the rival restaurant.  One day Hana's cousin convinces Hana to show him around Toronto and invites the young man from the rival restaurant to come along.  At one point they are verbally assaulted by some white supremacists, in the rucus Hana falls down.  Hana's cousin has filmed the incident and puts in on social media where it becomes widely watch with both supportive and not supportive comments.  Hana is very angry at her cousin for raising this situation online.

Hana and her cousin get busy trying to organize an annual neighbourhood street festival but they find their posters and some businesses get defaced.  Hana is very demoralized by this but they decide to work on.  On the day of the event there are some white supremacist protestors but also some counter protesters.  Once some musician arrives people in the neighbourhood decide to dance and ignore the protests.

A lot of other things happen in the book including that the young man of the rival restaurant gets to meet his mother.  He had been told by his mean father that she had died when the boy was young.  Hana and the young man marry.  Hana's cousin buys her mother's restaurant and updates it.  There is some interest in a podcast Hana has created about her aunt and it looks like she may get more opportunities in the broadcast field.

While there was a romance interest there was a lot more going on in this book with the neighbourhood politics, the racism, etc.  I liked the mix of story, podcast text and text messaging in the book.  It was a light but entertaining read.

Women of Chateau Lafayette

 by Stephanie Dray

This was a large book, 500 pages. I don't normally have the staying power for a long book but this one was certainly worth it.

It is based on real historical characters.  The story is about three different women, two of whom were real people.  The first story takes place in the 1770's the second in WWI and the third in WWII.

The story starts with a woman Adrienne, who marries a man named Lafayette.  Her family are nobles and her father works to get her and her husband active in the french court.  She is warmly welcomed by Marie Antoinette but her husband is teased.  Her husband, against family wishes, leaves for America to fight with the Americans to get them free of the British.  He is highly regarded by the Americans for his leadership and bravery and comes back to France Highly regarded.  However, the mood in France changes both towards him and towards the king.  He tries to get the King to agree to a constitutional Monarchy and the King signs papers but soon indicates he has no intention of following through.  This results in the French revolution.  Lafayette soon becomes hated by the french as they see him supporting the king.  Eventually he is imprisoned in Austria where his wife eventually goes to join him rather than be separated.  His wife is almost beheaded but escapes thanks to the intervention of an American diplomat.  Her mother, grandmother and sister are not so lucky.  Eventually the Lafayettes settle in the family estate, the chateau Chavaniac where the locals welcome them warmly.

The second story takes place  in WWII. A stage singer/actress marries a rich British man. She is the second real person. He is an adventurer.  At first they are very much in love but then the husband injures his leg and he doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with his wife and children.  His wife, waffles between love and disgust regarding her husband.  Although they aren't getting along the man buys his wife Chateau Chavaniac.  She decides to turn it into a shelter for orphans and sick children during the war.  She then becomes very active travelling back and forth between the U.S. and France, against her husband's wishes.  She and another woman set up a Lafayette Foundation to fund the work of the Chateau.  Because of her husband's name she has lots of connections in the U.S. and raises lots of money for her cause but she cannot get the U.S. president to send troops to aid in the fight in Europe.  The woman has a romantic relationship with a wealthy french soldier, he wants her to leave her husband and marry him.  While she does love him she decides not to marry him and eventually returns to the U.S. and her children but she keeps a hand on the running of the Chateau in France.

The third character is a girl Marthe, who has grown up as an orphan at the Chateau.  She longs to know who her parents were.  She is now a teacher at the chateau.  WWII is raging and the girl's fiancee, a livelong friend, is killed in the fighting.  The girl marries a local gendarme and this allows her to use her artistic skills to create false documents for some of the patients at the chateau and for others fleeing france.  Eventually she confesses and is about to be arrested but her husband arrives on the scene and while attempting to support her he is shot.  Eventually the woman is able to go to the U.S. on a scholarship to study art.

This was a fascinating story.  I never really knew about this french involvement in the American war of Independence and learned more about the turmoil in France in the 1700's.    It was dreadful all the innocent people who were killed by the masses.  A great read.

The Department oeef Rare Books and Special Collections

 by Eva Jurczyk

This is a book written by a Canadian Librarian from Toronto

The story is about a woman who is the assistant to the Director of a Rare Books and Special Collections Dept at a University.  She is on sabbatical working on writing a book.  However, she is called back to work when her boss is struck ill with a stroke.  He is in hospital in a coma.

Things are tense at the university because a rare collection of books had recently been acquired by the university.  The books are supposed to be locked in the safe in the Director's office but no one knows the current combination for the safe.  When the Assistant Director, now Acting Director manages to get the combination from the man's wife, they are shocked to find that the safe is empty.

The Assistant Director may feel that she could be the Director but she really seems to be unable to handle all the stress and takes to drinking, or drinking more than she did.  She leaves phone and email messages unanswered. She has a husband who is supposed to be a painter but who seems to be depressed and unmotivated.  The woman doesn't seem to get much support from her colleagues, some of whom feel that she is not suited for her new job.

The people who donated money to acquire this special set of books are eager to see the books at a special event.  The University President tells the woman to stall for time, she tells the patrons that insurance has not yet come through on the books so they offer them a glimpse at an old, rare early mathematics book instead.  The woman then spends time down in the storage area going through books with another colleague trying to find out if the missing books were shelved by mistake.  What a totally unmanagerial thing to do. A prof comes to the woman asking to carbon date the math book.  She is at first reluctant to do this but eventually agrees.  She is devastated to learn that the book is a facsimile.

Around the time all this is happening one of the staff, a woman, comes and asks to speak to the acting director, she is quite upset.  But because an event is underway the Acting Director tells her she will see her later but she does not followup with her.  The female employee does not show up for work for several days.  Finally the woman contacts the woman's estranged husband and eventually the police to report her missing.  The news breaks that this woman stole the missing books.  Eventually they find out that the woman drowned herself.

In the end it is discovered that the dead woman was having and affair with the director and somehow found out he was stealing books from the library and keeping them at his house.  His wife didn't know because he never let her into his office.

The book was about libraries but I had no sympathy for the main character, she seemed a bit of a disorganized whimp.  She did eventually find a police officer who believed her that the dead woman was innocent and helped her get to the truth.