Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: 5 Star Book Review

HEAD ON – Stories of Alopecia by Deeann Callis Graham – Self-Esteem, Success Self-Help, Dermatology

More than 10 years ago, when Deeann Callis Graham went through a second bout of alopecia areata (AA), the first was when she was seven years old, she wondered where she could find pictures and read stories of people who were also losing their hair. She wanted to embrace positive messages amid a society that equates baldness with cancer and sickness. Yearning to relate to people who looked like her, she started writing her own story and soon she had connected with others with alopecia wanting to tell their stories.

Head-On: Stories of Alopecia, featuring 75 narratives from people of all ages and walks of life with alopecia. Graham’s purpose is to educate and shed light on the illness that affects 6.8 million people in the US, according to the National Alopecia Areata Foundation (NAAF), and help change the world’s attitudes toward hair, beauty, and self-worth.

In the book, Graham makes it clear that alopecia areata is not cancer, and that hair loss is not any easier for men and boys than it is for girls and women. Alopecia areata is an autoimmune condition where the body gets confused and attacks the hair follicles, which causes hair to fall out. A more severe form is alopecia totalis, where all of the hair on the head falls out. Alopecia universalis, which is less common, is hair loss on the entire body including the head, eyelashes, eyebrows, legs, toes, etc.

To produce the 216-page book, which features black-and-white portraits and short narratives from each participant, Graham talked to more than 500 people to compile the stories and conduct research. At the end, she includes interviews with Jeff Woytovich, founder of the nonprofit Children’s Alopecia Project (CAP), and Andy Turpen, who started Mondo Baldo to highlight positive messages around baldness.

Most impressive are the narratives of hope, rebirth and renewed confidence after years of stares, pranks, and bullying in school and misinformed comments, rudeness, and more stares as adults. Being a child with alopecia can be particularly devastating, as the many contributors wrote, being called “freak” or “hairless cat” on the schoolyard. Sophia said she missed going to her junior prom; and Tanya recalls that as a youngster, she felt “ugly and vulnerable.”

Most of the contributors talk about the countless hours they spent in front of the mirror creatively trying to hide their bald patches with their existing hair. Making the decision to wear a wig in public was a major turning point and a show of independence yet it also came with its own potential failures. Sarah, from California, had a pivotal moment during middle school when a classmate pulled her wig off her head. Sarah was “completely shocked,” but after that incident, she decided to tattoo her eyebrows and leave the wig at home when she entered high school. “I’m just so tired of hiding,” she writes.

While some of the stories are heartbreaking, they are also uplifting, showing how each person rose from the ashes to use their alopecia for good either for their own self exploration or to help the world understand the illness.

Steph, a high school swimmer, says when the team gathers for pictures at meets, she proudly displays her bald head. “It’s as if I’m announcing, ‘Here I am. Bald, beautiful, and not sick!’”

Joyce, who has had alopecia for more than 50 years, had hair loss from age 12 to 24. Her hair fully returned and remained for almost 30 years. “I believed I was cured,” Joyce writes, however there is no known cure at this time although there are treatments. Later, when her son’s hair started falling out, hers did again too and she said she felt relieved she was done with the cycle.

Not only is Head-On a lovely display for the coffee table, it serves as a resource for parents of children with alopecia and anyone who would like to learn more. Graham has included Alopecia 101 with facts and, at the end, a Resources page listing organizations based in the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada.

Head On: Stories of Alopecia won First Place in the CIBA 2017 Instruction & Insight Awards for Non-Fiction.

May 15, 2019
The BOY WHO DANCED WITH RABBITS by J. R. Collins – U.S. Historical Fiction, Romantic Action/Adventure, Family Saga

J.R. Collins has given a voice to an ancestor, Jeb Collins, who was almost killed at birth – twice. His survival is significant for that, but also for the fact that in another part of the Georgia mountains, a Cherokee boy, Wolf, is born on the same night. The families of the two boys will meet and mix in the early days of American settlement when everyone had to struggle for survival, and such friendships were still possible.

Jeb learns smatterings of Cherokee language, and Wolf and his kin pick up English with a sharp mountain twang from their settler neighbors. Together Jeb and Wolf explore the mystical, mountainous part of Appalachia named Cho-E-Sto-E for the prevalence of rabbits there.

Both of the boys’ fathers remember and despise the British who killed the American rebels and betrayed the Indians who agreed to help them; and both hate all evil-doers, like the ones who kidnapped Jeb’s sister or the sneak-thieves who stole from Jeb’s family. But most of all, they will stand united against a nearby tribe that wants Wolf’s sister as a bride for their leader.

The author grew up in the region he describes so vividly in this, his first novel, and has a sequel, the award-winning, Living Where the Rabbits Dance. The story, focusing on the boy’s view of a sometimes-dangerous world, is told in a satisfyingly recognizable dialect, using many endearing folk expressions – one of our favorites being, My heart melted like butter on a hot biscuit.

This multilayered saga presages the time that will come when the Cherokees will be marched away on the Trail of Tears, and family connections like those depicted here will be destroyed in the name of Manifest Destiny. It is heartening to read about the few years enjoyed by such friends as Jeb and Wolf when they could roam the land together with the approval of their elders. There is a finely-honed homage paid to two religions, the Christianity of the Collins clan and the animist visionary beliefs of the Cherokees, each playing a role in Jeb’s perceptions of the world around him.

From learning to fish to making bead bracelets from local gemstones, to seeing visions invoked by Cherokee spirits, here is a tale of a boy coming of age in a significant time and place. Collins’ book records that history, that atmosphere, with equal measures of zeal and reverence.

The Boy Who Danced with Rabbits by J. R. Collins won First Place in the 2017 CIBAs for the Goethe Awards, Western Fiction.

May 14, 2019
LOVE and OTHER CONSOLATION PRIZES: A Novel by Jamie Ford – Family Saga, Asian American Literature & Fiction, Historical Fiction

In 1902, the year of the Boxer Rebellion in China, five-year-old Yung Kun-ai watches as his mother buries his newborn sister in a tiny grave that she has dug with her fingers. The starving mother hadn’t been able to feed her. She kisses her son and gives him her only possession, a filigreed hairpin, then tells him he must remain in the cemetery until his “uncle” comes to take him to America, to a new life in a new world. “This is my gift to you,” she says as she shuffles away.

These words, and the poignant story that follows, bring to mind two words from the title of author Jamie Ford’s New York Times bestseller first novel—‘bitter’ and ‘sweet’. This is his third…worthy of equal praise.

Yung spends that chilly night shivering, in fear of the nearby fighting between rebels and soldiers, and in doubt of his future. But his mother’s gift does indeed come to pass. A voyage of many weeks in the hold of a freighter takes him to Seattle. His early years there are not easy, however. Fathered by a white missionary, he is a half-breed and the brunt of taunting and worse by both his peers and his elders. Nonetheless, he ably gains an education, takes the name of Ernest Young, and begins to earn a living as the twelve-year-old houseboy and driver at a high-class brothel called The Tenderloin in Seattle’s Garment District. The other occupants—servants as well as the ‘working girls’—become the family he has yearned for. Some years later, he has his own family with Gracie, a Japanese immigrant known as Fahn when he met her (for the second time) at The Tenderloin.

The story hops back and forth between the first and seventh decades of the century, centering on Seattle’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific (AYP) Expo in 1909 and the city’s World Fair in 1962. A raffle at the former is what brings Ernest to The Tenderloin. During the latter, Ernest and Gracie’s daughter Juju, a journalist, has been asked by her editor to write a then-and-now story of the two fairs, based on interviews with old-timers who have been to both. Her primary interviewee is to be her father, she thinks, but he stalls her, offering only tidbits—nothing that would put her story on the front page. Why is he so reluctant? Is there a tale he doesn’t want to share, not only with the newspaper’s readers but even with his daughter?

This historical novel is brought to a literary level not only by the author’s expertise with language but also by the extent of his research into the facts around which the story is woven. In an Author’s Note, Ford explains that his inspiration for writing is a “never-ending appetite for lost history—the need to constantly turn over rocks and look at the squishy things underneath.”

For this novel, one of those rocks was the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. From yellowing newspaper articles relating to the Expo, he learned that both the suffrage movement and “social evils” such as brothels (not only the moral evil but the spread of syphilis) were at their height in Seattle at that time. One article told of a child (named Ernest), who was donated by the Washington Children’s Home Society as a raffle prize at the AYP. Another described a climb up Mount Rainier by Washington suffragettes. Much was written about the plight of East Asian immigrants, economically forced into servitude and prostitution. Jamie Ford drew on these articles and other historical documentation to create this touching story and to bring to life its colorful and accurately drawn characters.

May 11, 2019
HIGH FLYING by Kaylin McFarren – Time Travel, Action/Adventure, Psychological Fiction

Stunt-pilot, 21-year-old Skylar Haines, honed by a childhood of adversity and trauma, is ambivalent about flying eight new maneuvers for which she’s had little preparation and no in-air practice. A lot could go wrong.

Her father, a pilot, was killed in a plane crash before she was born, triggering her mother’s downward spiral into a life of booze, drugs, and prostitution. When Skylar was seven, her mother died. As an orphan, Skylar fell into the system until her grandfather stepped in — no bed of roses there. Although she emerged an independent, savvy, and street-smart survivor who’d learned to fly along the way, those painful memories of her youth are always fresh in her mind.

Why had she agreed to fly in tandem with her mentor, Jake Brennen, for this performance? She might have said it was a lifelong dream. Or, that she did it out of love. Both would be true, but, of course, there is more…

Before she realizes it, she’s flown into the bowels of a storm, loses radio contact with Jake, and struggles to keep her plane aloft. After a near miss with another aircraft, she regains radio contact. A stranger talks her down into a world before her time.

Skylar uses everything she knows, and everything she’s learned to survive. Dylan Haines, who’s not yet her father, saves her, and she becomes entangled in his life in ways that stretch the imagination. He is caught in a web of danger and deceit destined to kill him. Skylar is tempted to intervene, but she knows his fate is set. Her father has to die, in order for her to live.

Like a modern-day H.G. Wells, Kaylin McFarren’s High Flying, ventures boldly into the fourth dimension, where history is reimagined, and epiphanies come in three-dimensional, real time. This gritty, emotionally penetrating story, set in Nevada, that not only touches upon social concerns with roots in the past but reaches into the future. The characters have depth, and the dialogue is sparkling authenticity. Here’s a story where everyone has an agenda, there are more crooks than cops, and bullets fly with abandon. In other words, a deliciously twisted sci-fi mystery with plenty of danger and romance!

May 10, 2019
MY CHRISTMAS ATTIC by Dennis Clausen – Heartwarming, Seasonal Literature, Family Saga

A lonely child’s fantasy life intersects with reality in this Korean War-era tale of separation and reunion.

At almost nine, Jake often escapes into his imagination, blotting out a couple of situations developing around him. He and his mother are hoping against hope that his father might someday return from the Korean War, and Jake cannot read. Words just seem to jumble up before his eyes, the other kids make fun of him, and worse – bullying has become routine. These days, Jake tries every ruse to skip school until he is referred to a reading counselor who figures it out. Jake is dyslexic, as is the counselor, and this may mean he is, in fact, more intelligent than average, as well as unusually intuitive.

Intuition begins to seep into Jake’s life as he spends time in the attic arranging the Christmas ornaments, wishing it could be “Christmas forever” for himself, and for everyone. One of the decorations is a porcelain figure of an old bearded man, Ebenezer, who holds a mysterious, unreadable scroll. Deciphering the scroll’s message will lead Jake into a world of psychic visions, ultimately leading to his conviction that his father is alive. Jake’s mother, who has built a sentiment-laden shrine to her lost love, holds on to the last shreds of hope even as her soldier husband is officially presumed dead. Together, she and Jake will learn the surprising truth.

Author Clausen (Prairie Son) has an excellent grasp of the emotive power of the past to awaken the reader to timeless influences. In this story, the Ebenezer ornament said to be 100 years old, links old customs with a child’s search for peace and reassurance in the present. As the boy travels through time with the ancient sage, he becomes stronger, better able to face his current struggles.

Clausen writes with authority about these two subjects, dyslexia and its effects on the mind, and “The Forgotten War” in Korea, where thousands of American soldiers remain unaccounted for to this day. He also links the earnest, childlike wishes of Jake to find solace and create solutions to the pervasive sadness of a mother mourning her husband while doing her best to support and encourage their only child.

The novel begins and ends in a present-day framework in which we learn that Jake has incorporated his childhood adventures into an adult striving to expand the “forever Christmas” concept to a broader spectrum.

Plausible fantasy with a clear connection to our national past composed by a practiced wordsmith, My Christmas Attic can be appreciated as a classic seasonal saga with a cinematic quality that speaks of broader possibilities.

May 9, 2019
FLOWERANTHA by Bek Castro – Childrens’ Intermediate Readers, Sword & Stone Fantasy, Magic & Fantasy

Beautiful and imaginative, Flowerantha is a magical tale of two young girls who fall through a portal into an unknown world. With the help of restless boy Mash and aspiring soldier Bushraal, Beverly and May Lynn must travel among rising tensions to make it home safe.

No visitors have traveled to Flowerantha since its last visitor turned corrupt and started a war ten years prior. Mash is a young tree dwelling boy who desires nothing more than to go to the strange land that the visitors come from. When Mash finds out there are visitors, he volunteers to help them get home with the intention of following them through the portal.

Getting Beverly and May Lynn home is not as simple as initially believed. Magic is weakening, and Bushraal, ready to prove his worth as a future soldier, sees Mash as a burdened addition to his quest. All must put their particular prejudices aside to keep Flowerantha off the brink of another war and to keep two innocent girls protected on their journey home.

Bek Castro is a skillful writer who excels at building a world that feels alive. Flowerantha is a world saturated with magic and is in everything from the flowers that cover the sprawling landscapes to the wishing abilities of its people. The success and beauty of this short novel come from its central theme that no matter if a family is small, big, or adopted, they are all still family. Loss of loved ones is also prevalent and is not simplified for the sake of young audiences.

Settle in a comfy car during a rainy spring day and learn all about the world of Flowerantha as the rain feeds the flowers outside.

Floweranta won First Place in the 2017 CIBAs for Early Readers, the Gertrude Warner Awards.

April 29, 2019
CRYPTIC SPACES Book Three: DARK EDGE RISING by Deen Ferrell – Young Adult, Sci-fi/Fantasy, Action/Adventure

Seventeen-year-old mathematical genius Willoughby has the weight of the world on his shoulders ─ literally. As part of a secret time travel organization known as Observations, Inc., Willoughby and his team, usually silent observers in their travels, are tasked with keeping the balance between control and chaos.

Yet after the murder of their friend and mentor H.S. a year ago, Willoughby and his team have sought answers to questions they don’t even know how to ask. Everyone on the team has suffered, and Willoughby can’t help but feel he could have done more to help H.S. and more to keep his team, namely his girlfriend and musical prodigy Sydney, safe.

Willoughby can “see” time code and take advantage of time junctions, he has a natural connection with time and can sometimes even track people throughout the time grid, a skill his nemesis, a man-like creature known as Beelzebub, takes credit for. Unfortunately for the Observations, Inc. crew, Beelzebub can also manipulate time but in a much more advanced way.

Hellbent on finding the Prime Hole Facility, a time hub created by Earth’s historians the otherworldly Atlanteans, Beelzebub wants to recreate history, restructure mankind’s past, and plunge the planet into chaos. He and his Dark Edge Brotherhood will stop at nothing, having already killed Willoughby’s boss and mentor since Willoughby is the key to unlocking a gateway of power, unleashing unlimited control over man. Before he can harness his full potential, he and his team will have to solve millennia old clues while searching for a lost ancient princess and steering clear of the Dark Edge, but very soon, both Willoughby and Sydney will learn the real cost of his power.

A prevailing idea within the novel is self-discovery. The characters often delve deep within themselves to find that hidden spark, that “push a little harder” mentality to solve the issues thrown at them by forces that want nothing more than to drown creativity, thus ridding the world of enlightenment and plunging it back into darkness. The characters have to stop fear’s subjugation and free themselves enough to look inside for the answers that are quietly waiting for daylight. Through that self-discovery comes growth but only when the characters stop looking to the world to define themselves (a lesson most people need). Only by genuinely finding the power within can Willoughby save humanity, but he can’t do that alone.

The bond between the characters is not only the key to survival in this high-stakes time game but is also a strength of the novel. Since Dark Edge Rising is the third in the Cryptic Spaces series, the Observations, Inc. team is firmly established; however, this pre-established bond will not keep the reader from enjoying the character interactions. Each team member has their own unique ability or place on the team in this something-for-everyone narrative. Despite their individualism, the characters’ friendship dominates. Repeatedly, the theme of unity saves the day and keeps the plot rolling steadily along. Each member brings something new to the story, and the alternating point of view keeps the story fresh and the reader engaged.

Cryptic Spaces, Book Three: Dark Edge Rising won First Place in the 2017 CIBAs in the Dante Rossetti Awards for Young Adult novels.

April 29, 2019
The PLACE of QUARANTINE by Vadim Babenko – Astronomy of the Universe, Russian Dramas/Plays, System Theory & Physics, Sci-Fi

Theo awakens to a sound, which he likens to that of a trembling copper string. He finds himself midway up a stairway and realizes that the sound emanates from an ordinary fluorescent tube, about to burn out. He climbs to the next floor, where a door is open. A woman introduces herself as Elsa and welcomes him in.

Not remembering anything, or knowing where he is, Theo asks Elsa. Her answer confounds him. He is in their apartment, in a place called Quarantine. In support of her response, she hands him a laminated paper that reads, “WELCOME. YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED CORPOREAL DEATH FOR THE FIRST TIME. THE DEATH OF THE BODY IS NOT AS SIGNIFICANT AS YOU MIGHT THINK. THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR.” Really? Theo goes cold. Memories begin to emerge—a gunshot and terrifying pain, a woman in tears, the old streets of Bern. Then it all fades.

Vadim Babenko, Russian-born physicist and businessman, left his former careers behind to become a writer of fiction—in The Place of Quarantine, thought-provoking fiction that begs us to consider what the reality of life truly is. In this effort, he draws on principles from the work of renowned researchers, such as Italian physicist Giuseppe Vitiello, to support the protagonist, Theo’s work, in particular, his concept of “the application of quantum field theory to the modeling of human memory and intelligence.”

Yes, science plays a significant role in this book, but it’s a supportive role, a means to an end: our consideration of the possibilities of life beyond that which we experience on Earth, and of the regeneration of our knowledge and memories, and their further development to benefit the inhabitants of the place of a subsequent life. Theo is assigned an advisor/mentor/friend, called Nestor, to help him with the task of reviving the memories of his renowned, but uncompleted research on Earth. His knowledge and intelligence are needed in Quarantine and perhaps beyond. Since the particular vocabulary of physics and metaphysics is not familiar to many of us, a glossary of the terminology is at the reader’s fingertips.

The science, however, is interwoven with the stories of characters from Theo’s very international first life—in particular, a beautiful young Asian woman, Tina, whom he met and loved in Bangkok and yearns for even in Quarantine; and a Russian businessman named Ivan Brevich, who is consumed with revenging the murder of his beloved wife, Nok. In Quarantine, his roommate Elsa adds a human element to his life, making his breakfast of coffee, fried eggs, and toast, and generally being his companion, although as phantom beings in a world of images. Nestor, who is but a face, with a voice, on the wall screen, is a friend as well as an advisor and research colleague.

As Theo comes to believe in what his research is telling him, he becomes increasingly obsessed with finding Tina, if not in Quarantine, then in whatever life awaits him next, if indeed one does. Can he be satisfied with continuing his work for the benefit of Quarantine, or must he try to prove his belief by taking the chance to move on?

April 16, 2019
BLESSINGS and CURSES by Judy Kelly – Christian Mystery, Mystery/Suspense, Contemporary Romance

Olivia Douglass has completed her college coursework in religious education and is set to graduate. Her adoptive parents and sister and will be on hand for the occasion along with her steady beau, Claude. But she harbors a painful secret: contrary to their expectations, she has decided not to go on to become a priest, even though she has been preparing to do so for several years.

Since childhood, it seems, Olivia has felt a curse upon her, some wickedness that follows her, making her unworthy of a religious profession. That feeling has returned at this crucial juncture to cast a shadow over her plans. Understanding, but unsure she should give up her plans, Olivia’s parish priest sends her on an errand of mercy – to pray with Leon, a man on death row with only two weeks to live.

Assisted by fellow church member Wesley Johns, meeting the prisoner proves far more difficult than Olivia had imagined. She persists, though, and tries to access the spiritual nature of this hate-filled man who kidnapped and slaughtered numerous women and children. As Olivia gets to know Leon better, she simultaneously forms a friendship with Wesley, and they discover that they have a link, Wesley shares in the curse that envelops her—and like her, longs for a way out.

At the same time, her parents’ reaction to Olivia meeting and praying with Leon is odd and rather disturbing. On top of that, her sister begins to reveal signs of her own cursed and tormented life. Finally, Olivia will confront her ghosts, and theirs, in a brave and daring move.

Author Judy Kelly writes with skill and intelligence, building her plot step by step so that even when the reader begins to think that the outcome is inevitable, a twist crops up to turn the tale in yet a new direction. Visits to the prison have a knowledgeable feel, and the character of Leon is vividly depicted as he at first crudely and violently rejects Olivia’s help, then gradually comes to accept and welcome her, and finally accedes to her spiritual support on the next to last day of his life.

Kelly draws her characters with depth, from the twisted psychology of a serial killer to Olivia’s growing tenderness toward Wesley, and with it, the revelations prodding her about Claude’s dark side.

Blessings and Curses combines themes of romantic love, family ties, religious aspirations and coming of age with a slowly unfolding, at times terrifying glimpse of genuine evil.

April 6, 2019
SUPPOSE: A Lillian Dove Mystery by D. J. Adamson – Mystery, Amateur Sleuth, Female Lead

In this enticing second installment of D. J. Adamson’s Lillian Dove Mystery series, big city problems wind up in a small town in the Midwest threatening not only the safety and integrity of the community, but bringing imminent danger to the life of one woman who is just trying to move beyond her rocky past and navigate toward a more positive future.

Trying to get your life back on track may be a little tricky when you’re a recovering alcoholic five years sober, and you’ve just inherited a house and the local AAA Discount Liquor Store. Here in Frytown, Iowa, Lillian Dove is clearly aware that “life has its ironies,” but she’s determined to make the best of recent circumstances. With her cat Bacardi, she’s been residing at her mother Dahlia’s condo in Lake’s Edge Senior Residential Complex, while the feisty woman is in a nearby convalescent home hell-bent on getting out.

Lillian’s also been involved with the local Frytown Police Chief, a man she felt offered love and security, though unfortunately he also happens to be married. While sobriety and the unexpected new business acquisition have boosted her spirits, Lillian is haunted by the suicide of her best friend Cressie, a former addict who forced Lillian to face her own issues.

Suddenly, Cressie’s onetime ne’er do well boyfriend is threatening to blackmail Lillian, claiming to have video proof that she was responsible for Cressie’s death. Lillian knows his demands are bogus, but when his dead body is discovered at the condo, she’s determined to uncover the truth and clear her own name.

Within this well-crafted storyline, the murder investigation is linked to a border-crossing drug operation that stems from a multi-million-dollar Chicago firm, and a CEO involved in illegal money laundering. As Federal Agents and the local Police Department unite to catch the criminals, Lillian finds herself in harm’s way when she’s unwittingly dragged into the high-risk probe. From murder and a suspicious flash drive to vandalism, kidnapping, and surprise revelations, Lillian embarks on a winding, roller-coaster ride.

For those unfamiliar with Adamson’s evolving mystery series, a passing mention of Lillian’s having been a prior witness to an arson case that resulted in near dire consequences for both Lillian and her mother, helps bring readers up to speed and also confirms Lillian’s seemingly magnetic draw to trouble.

While chapter/segment titles indicate this story plays out over a short span of a few days, Adamson broadens the platform with a full range of characters and action. From the local mayor being accused of bigamy and a dispatch operator who equates to “Town Gossipedia”, to the ghost of Lillian’s benefactor assuring her that “everything will be fine” and the pirate-costumed nurse just trying to keep the ornery senior patients in line, all add engaging humor and lightness to the narrative in contrast with the greater tension and drama.

Like all good mysteries, Adamson creates a tale riddled with questions. Intertwined with bantering dialogue and heated conversations, Lillian’s self-imposed ponderings about recent events help draw us into the heart and mind of the central character. As a soul-searching individual coming to grips with the past, Lillian’s dream states offer a glimpse of her lost childhood and her fractured life. Adamson clearly has an eye for detail. Whether exposed in the sharp visuals of a crime scene, or revealed in the aromatic constants of a nursing home environment perfumed by the fragrance of “urine, unwashed bodies, and the Wednesday night meatloaf special,” the writing paints a colorful, and vivid picture.

Through the character of Lillian Dove, readers are introduced to a flawed, but tenacious female heroine who is genuinely likable. Suppose is a mystery filled with small-town heart, yet big city edge, unexpected excitement, and a touch of humor. Together they prove a smart, and winning combination.

Suppose won First Place in the 2017 CIBA M&M Awards!

April 6, 2019