Dear Exile - Hillary Liftin and Kate Montgomery

This was a little gem!  Two 20 something's exchange letters between one seeking a career and love in New York City and the other serving in the Peace Corps in Kenya.  They were college friends before striking out on different paths.  I loved their spirit and up beat outlook despite what life throws at them.  A great read.

Published:  1999  Read: August 2018  Genre: Fiction

Trail of Crumbs - Kim Sunee

Sub-title: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home

A Korean adoptee seeking a feeling of belonging becomes the girlfriend of a rich older Frenchman and lives the high life in Europe for a decade before returning to America.  As a young woman she becomes an excellent cook and today is a food editor for a magazine in Alaska.

This was a moving read.  I enjoyed hearing the story of a much younger woman coming to terms with her feelings and relationships.  It was disturbing to read how much control over her life she gave to the man she was with although he was just trying to make her happy.  A good read.

Published:  2008  Read: July 2018  Genre: Memoir

Shtum - Jem Lester

This is the story told by the father of a severely autistic son.  Jonah is about 9 or 10 years old and does not speak, dress or bathe himself and still wears diapers.  He lives in England where a case must be made to have him placed in a special live-in school for autistic children.  His father, Ben, is guilt ridden over his conflicting feelings over his son.  His mother, Emma, is leaving them to create a single family household that she claims will increase their chances of a placement.  Jonah and Ben go to live with Ben's father.  He is grandfather stoic and gruff with his son, but shares stories of his youth with Jonah as he struggles with his own illness.

These are all hurting people with no end in site for the pain.  The intimate, inside look at life with an autistic child is heartbreaking and horrifying.  The toll on Ben and Emma's marriage, the relationship between fathers and sons are laid out in stark, biting conversations between people trying to figure out how to live with their reality.

The author in real life is the father of an autistic child.  I initially was irritated and put off by the self-pity of the father who drinks himself into stupors.  I finished the book with a deeper empathy for people struggling to live life in impossible situations with no end in sight. 

Published:  2016  Read: December 2017  Genre: Fictionalized biography

In Calabria - Peter S Beagle

I need to start being more selective with what I pick up at the library.  This little book had some good reviews (but then, don't all book covers have glowing reviews?) and I recognized the author.  It's a fable, of sorts, about a unicorn that comes to the farm of an isolated, older man to have her colt.  The man befriends the unicorn at the same time he opens up to being a friend of a young woman who brings his mail.

The author wrote one of my favorite books, A Fine and Private Place back in the 1960's.  It's a story of unresolved love in the afterlife.  This book has none of the charm or magic power of his earlier one for me.  Not recommended.

Published:  2017  Read: July 2017  Genre: Fiction (fantasy)