Before We Were Yours - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

I enjoy books where there are two plots going on at the same time. In Before We Were Yours, one of the stories takes place in the late 1930s. The second one is set in present day. Slowly the relationship between the two plot lines is revealed.

Before We Were Yours is a 5-star book, based on a true story, that I won't soon forget.

Beginning:

Prelude
Baltimore, Maryland
August 3, 1939

My story begins on a sweltering August night, in a place I will never set eyes upon. The room takes life only in my imaginings. It is large most days when I conjure it. The walls are white and clean, the bed linens crisp as a fallen leaf. The private suite has the very finest of everything. Outside, the breeze is weary, and the cicadas throb in the tall trees, their verdant hiding places just below the window frames. The screens sway inward as the attic fan rattles overhead, pulling at wet air that has no desire to be moved.

56% on my Kindle:
I spin around and bolt for the backyard, but I'm running in sand, the long wrap dress clinging around my legs, my flip-flops slapping. I catch the flash of a blue shirt near my grandmother's palmetto hedge just in time to put on the brakes and act casual coming up the boardwalk.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Family Saga
Pages: 339
Amazon Link:  Before We Were Yours
Copyright 2017

Synopsis:

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

              

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
Click HERE to join other Friday 56 bloggers (sponsored by Freda's Voice)

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger

Still Alice - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

     Written in 2007, STILL ALICE is as relevant today as it was ten years ago. Author Lisa Genova takes her readers into the mind of Dr. Alice Howland, a Harvard professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. The story is an unforgettable look at this devastating disease.

     I saw the movie several years ago (starring Julianne Moore), but the book offers so much more detail. By the way, although the paperback edition of the copy I have was published by Simon & Schuster, the author says in her "A Conversation With Lisa Genova" appendix that she self-published Still Alice because she "... knew it would take years to find a publishing house" and she "...felt an urgent responsibility to get the book out immediately." So many wonderful books start with self-publishing!

Book Beginning:

September 2003

    Alice sat at her desk in their bedroom distracted by the sounds of John racing through each of the rooms on the first floor. She needed to finish her peer review of a paper submitted to the Journal of Cognitive Psychology before her flight, and she'd just read the same sentence three times without comprehending it. It was 7:30 according to their alarm clock, which she guessed was about ten minutes fast. She knew from the approximate time and the escalating volume of his racing that he was trying to leave, but he'd forgotten something and couldn't find it. She tapped her red pen on her bottom lip as she watched the digital numbers on the clock and listened for what she knew was coming.

The Friday 56 (from Page 56):

     "Okay, I'm going to tell you a name and address, and you're going to repeat it back to me. Then, we're going to do some other things, and I'm going to ask you to repeat the same name and address again later. Ready, here it is - John Black, 42 West Street, Brighton. Can you repeat that for me?"

Genre: Medical Fiction / Women's Fiction

Book Length: 292 Pages (plus appendices) - Trade Paperback Edition

Amazon Link: Still Alice

Author Website: Lisa Genova

Synopsis (from the author's website):

She didn’t want to become someone people avoided and feared. She wanted to live to hold Anna’s baby and know it was her grandchild. She wanted to see Lydia act in something she was proud of. She wanted to see Tom fall in love. She wanted to read every book she could before she could no longer read.

Alice Howland is proud of the life she has worked so hard to build. A Harvard professor, she has a successful husband and three grown children. When Alice begins to grow forgetful at first she just dismisses it, but when she gets lost in her own neighborhood she realizes that something is terribly wrong. Alice finds herself in the rapid downward spiral of Alzheimer’s disease. She is only 50 years old.

While Alice once placed her worth and identity in her celebrated and respected academic life, now she must re-evaluate her relationship with her husband, her expectations of her children and her ideas about herself and her place in the world.

Losing her yesterdays, her short-term memory hanging on by a couple of frayed threads, she is living in the moment, living for each day. But she is still Alice.

Still Alice is as compelling as A Beautiful Mind and as powerful as Ordinary People. You will gain an understanding of those affected by early-onset Alzheimer’s and remain moved and inspired long after you have put it down.

                

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
Click HERE to join other Friday 56 bloggers (sponsored by Freda's Voice)

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger

Blueprints - #BookBeginnings on Friday and #TheFriday56

    If I'm looking for a book with an engaging plot, believable characters, and an interesting setting, I know I can count on one written by Barbara Delinsky. Blueprints takes readers into the world of home renovation TV shows - just the thing for an HGTV addict like me! There's conflict between mother and daughter as major changes are planned for the show, and there's romance too. At age 56, is mom too old for love? I don't think so!
    Thank you, Sandra, for sending me this book for my birthday.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Romance
Book Length: 405 Pages (Trade Paperback)
Amazon Link: Blueprints
Author Website:  Barbara Delinsky

Book Beginning:
Prologue
     The rain let up just in time. The final day of taping for the spring season of Gut It! was about to begin, and though the sun hadn't yet appeared, Caroline MacAfee's hopes were high. Well behind the stream of work vehicles pulling up on the road, the western sky was giving way to scattered patches of blue, as the June breeze pushed gunmetal clouds east, toward Boston and the sea.

Friday 56 (from Page 56):
     She sat forward and called, "That place is in the middle of nowhere. It has water problems, zoning problems, access problems, and" - she raised her voice when he didn't stop - "It's so infested with carpenter ants that you'd be best burning the thing to the ground. You don't want that place, Dean!...."

Synopsis from the Author's Website:

     Set in suburban Boston in a world of reality tv and home design, Blueprints is the story of two strong women, Caroline and Jamie MacAfee, mother and daughter, best friends. The day after her 56th birthday, Caroline is told that she is too old to be the public face of Gut It!, a family-based home construction show, and that her 29-year-old daughter, Jamie, will replace her as its host. Daughter ousting mother from a job she loves? The resulting rift occurs at a time when each needs the other more than ever.

     For Jamie, an architect, life changes overnight when, soon after learning of the host shift, her father and his young third wife die in a freak accident that orphans their two-year-old son. Accustomed to neatness and planning, she is suddenly grappling with a toddler who misses his parents, a fiancé who doesn’t want the child, a staggering new attraction, and a work challenge that, if botched, could undermine the future of both MacAfee Homes and Gut It!

     For Caroline, a master carpenter, hosting Gut It! was an inadvertent sideline that has become part of her identity. Facing its loss, she feels betrayed by her daughter and old in the eyes of the world. Already raw, when her ex-husband dies, she is thrust into the role of giving emotional support to his aging father, who suddenly has other designs on her time. And then there’s Dean, her long-time friend, who sets out to show her that age is just a number. His efforts to seduce her awaken desires in her that have been dormant for so long that she feels foreign to herself.

     Who am I? Both women ask themselves this as their lives take dramatic twists. Their challenge is not only to find themselves but to find each other again.

           

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
Click HERE to join other Friday 56 bloggers (sponsored by Freda's Voice)

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger

A Thread of Truth (Cobbled Court Quilt #2) - #TeaserTuesday, First Chapter, First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros

A quilting friend recently gave me all seven books in Marie Bostwick's Cobbled Court Quilt Series. I finished Book #1 and today I'm featuring excerpts from Book #2, which I've barely started. So far, I'm enjoying the intertwined stories of the women of small-town New Bern, Connecticut, all of them connected by the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop. This story deals with domestic violence. Thanks for the books, Nan!

Genre: Women's Fiction
Book Length: 335 Pages
Amazon Link: A Thread of Truth
Author Website: Marie Bostwick

First Paragraph (from the Prologue):
     The counselor is young, blond, and pretty, and obviously nervous. She glances at her reflection in the wall mirror when she enters the waiting room, adjusts her collar, and clears her throat before extending her hand toward me with a wide, rehearsed smile and a request for me to follow her back to her office.

Teaser #1 (from Pages 15-16 in my trade paperback):
She wouldn't listen to any of my excuses about passing on the quilt class, just knocked them all down in that way she has, huffing and puffing out words like "Nonsense!" and "Rubbish!" like the big, bad wolf on a mission, not stopping until your little house of sticks is lying in a heap and there you stand with nothing left to hide behind. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in a room with six other students, listening to Evelyn Dixon explain the techniques for constructing our first project, a log cabin quilt.

Teaser #2 (from Page 90): 
There never was a moment when I could relax and be myself because I was always aware that he could walk through that door at any moment and if he didn't like what he saw, there would be consequences. Inevitable, unpredictable, irrational consequences. 

Synopsis:
At twenty-seven, having fled an abusive marriage with little more than her kids and the clothes on her back, Ivy Peterman figures she has nowhere to go but up. Quaint, historic New Bern, Connecticut, seems as good a place as any to start fresh. With a part-time job at the Cobbled Court Quilt Shop and budding friendships, Ivy feels hopeful for the first time in ages.

But when a popular quilting TV show is taped at the quilt shop, Ivy's unwitting appearance in an on-air promo alerts her ex-husband to her whereabouts. Suddenly, Ivy is facing the fight of her life--one that forces her to face her deepest fears as a woman and a mother. This time, however, she's got a sisterhood behind her: companions as complex, strong, and lasting as the quilts they stitch. . .

Just for fun, here's a photo of a log cabin quilt I made several years ago. I arranged the blocks in a diamond pattern, and it's one of my favorite creations.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.

Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger

Letters from #Paris - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

I've always hoped to visit Paris, and Letters from Paris made me want to catch the next plane to France! Juliet Blackwell tells the story of a woman who leaves a high-powered job in Chicago to take care of her grandmother in Louisiana. That decision leads to a journey to Paris to track down the history of a mask of a woman called L'Inconnue (The Unknown Woman). The story of the creation of the original mask (100 years earlier) weaves through this contemporary tale.
     I enjoyed this love story/mystery a lot and will pick up The Paris Key when I return Letters from Paris to the library.

FYI: Juliet Blackwell also writes the Witchcraft Mysteries and the Haunted Home Renovation series.

Genre: Women's Fiction
Book Length: 348 Pages (Trade Paperback)
Amazon Link: Letters from Paris
Author Website: Juliet Blackwell

First Paragraphs/Intro (Prologue):
Sabine
February 27, 1898
     He sleeps.
     Sabine creeps across the dark studio before dawn, beseeching the silent faces not to betray her. They watch her every move, mute witnesses to her crime.
     Slipping through the door, she winces at the scraping sound of metal on metal as she pauses to latch it behind her. Fog envelops her, the mist cutting through her threadbare blouse and underthings, wet needles of cold air piercing her skin.

Teaser (from Page 111):
     But no matter the author, each of the tales ended in L'Inconnue meeting her watery death in the Seine at a brutally young age. Yet no one knew who she really was. How could so many have written about her, obsessed over her - including some of the greatest minds of Europe - and yet she remained inconnue?

Synopsis (from Amazon):
     After surviving the accident that took her mother’s life, Claire Broussard has worked hard to escape her small Louisiana hometown. But these days she feels something is lacking. Abruptly leaving her lucrative job in Chicago, Claire returns home to care for her ailing grandmother. There, she unearths a beautiful piece of artwork that her great-grandfather sent home from Paris after World War II. 
     At her grandmother’s urging, Claire travels to Paris to track down the century-old mask-making atelier where the object, known only as “L’Inconnue”—or The Unknown Woman—was created. Under the watchful eye of a surly mask-maker, Claire discovers a cache of letters that offers insight into the life of the Belle Epoque woman immortalized in the work of art. As Claire explores the unknown woman’s tragic fate, she begins to unravel deeply buried secrets in her own life.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up HERE

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

The Midwife of Hope River - The #Friday56 and #BookBeginnings on Friday

Patricia Harman's Hope River novels vividly capture life in West Virginia during the Great Depression. In The Midwife of Hope River Patience Murphy delivers the babies of Appalachian mothers whether rich or poor, black or white, often under difficult circumstances. The author takes the reader to dangerous coal mines, explores racial attitudes, and shows the reality of childbirth during that era. The plot captured me from the very first as I watched Patience deal with a difficult past (she'd been orphaned and widowed and had been accused of a crime) and yet find joy in bringing new life into the world. The story is touching, funny, and eye-opening. One of the most memorable books I've read.

The Midwife of Hope River is Book #1 in the Hope River Series. I featured The Reluctant Midwife (Book #2) on my blog earlier: Here.  Both books stand alone, and I highly recommend them. 
FYI: Patricia Harman worked for over thirty years as a midwife and has an MSN in Nurse-Midwifery. She knows her stuff.

Book Beginning:
Stillbirth
     "How long do you think my baby's been dead?" Katherine turns toward me, and I can tell she's still crying.
     "Five days, maybe less," I answer my patient. "I heard the heartbeat when I checked you last Friday, and you said the baby moved during church. Shut your eyes now. Try. You need to rest."

Friday 56 (from 56% on my Kindle):
     At last we are getting produce from the garden, small peas that we eat without shelling, lettuce, and chard. We enjoyed Hannah's bacon and we fish in the river, but we are down to a cup of flour, the sugar is gone, and our money jar is empty except for a few last coins. I stare at them now, scattered on the table, as I pull on my town shoes.

Genre: Historical Women's Fiction
Book Length: 403 Pages
Amazon Link: The Midwife of Hope River
Author Website:  Patricia Harman

Synopsis (from Amazon):
A remarkable new voice in American fiction enchants readers with a moving and uplifting novel that celebrates the miracle of life. In The Midwife of Hope River, first-time novelist Patricia Harmon transports us to poverty stricken Appalachia during the Great Depression years of the 1930s and introduces us to a truly unforgettable heroine. Patience Murphy, a midwife struggling against disease, poverty, and prejudice—and her own haunting past—is a strong and endearing character that fans of the books of Ami McKay and Diane Chamberlain will take into their hearts, as she courageously attempts to bring new light, and life, into an otherwise cruel world.

                

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
Click HERE to join other Friday 56 bloggers (sponsored by Freda's Voice)

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger

Chestnut Street - #BookBeginnings on Friday and #TheFriday56

My husband likes to read "real" books, so every once in a while, we go to Barnes & Noble to satisfy his habit. Though most of my reading is done on my Kindle, I always seem to come home with some great paperbacks or hardbacks for myself too. My latest find (a bargain from the "Former Bestsellers" table) was CHESTNUT STREET by Maeve Binchy. Each chapter is a short story that takes place on Chestnut Street in Dublin, Ireland. I'm about halfway through, and I've enjoyed meeting the Chestnut Street neighbors. My only complaint is that I wish some of these stories had turned into full-length novels! 

Book Beginning (from the first story "Dolly's Mother"):
    It was all the harder because her mother had been so beautiful. If only Dolly's mother had been a round, bunlike woman, or a small wrinkled person, it might have been easier for Dolly, this business of growing up. But no, there were no consolations on that score. Mother was tall and willowy and had a smile that made other people smile too and a laugh that caused strangers to look up with pleasure. Mother always knew what to say and said it; Mother wore long lilac silk scarves so elegantly they seemed to flow with her when she walked. If Dolly tried to wear a scarf, either it looked like a bandage or else she got mistaken for a football fan. If you were square and solid and without color or grace, it was sometimes easy to hate Mother.

The Friday 56 (from "Nessa Byrne" at Page 56 in my hardback): 
[Nessa's family is preparing for the annual visit from their Aunt Elizabeth, a woman who "... knew all about everything and she was never wrong."]
     Aunt Elizabeth's bedroom was emptied of all the clutter that had built up there in the year since her last visit. They touched up the paintwork and lined the nice empty drawers with clean pink paper.
     Nessa's mother often said with a weary laugh that if it hadn't been for Elizabeth's annual vacation the whole place would have been a complete tip.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Family Life
Amazon Link: Chestnut Street
Length: 368 Pages
Author's Website: Maeve Binchy

Synopsis from Goodreads:
    Maeve Binchy imagined a street in Dublin with many characters coming and going, and every once in a while she would write about one of these people. She would then put it in a drawer; “for the future,” she would say. The future is now.
    Across town from St. Jarlath’s Crescent, featured in Minding Frankie, is Chestnut Street, where neighbors come and go. Behind their closed doors we encounter very different people with different life circumstances, occupations, and sensibilities. Some of the unforgettable characters lovingly brought to life by Binchy are Bucket Maguire, the window cleaner, who must do more than he bargained for to protect his son; Nessa Byrne, whose aunt visits from  America every summer and turns the house—and Nessa’s world—upside down; Lilian, the generous girl with the big heart and a fiancé whom no one approves of; Melly, whose gossip about the neighbors helps Madame Magic, a self-styled fortune-teller, get everyone on the right track; Dolly, who discovers more about her perfect mother than she ever wanted to know; and Molly, who learns the cure for sleeplessness from her pen pal from Chicago . . . 
    Chestnut Street is written with the humor and understanding that are earmarks of Maeve Binchy’s extraordinary work and, once again, she warms our hearts with her storytelling.

                

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
Click HERE to join other Friday 56 bloggers (sponsored by Freda's Voice)

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger

Broken Pieces - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

    Many of my favorite books have plots that revolve around dysfunctional families. Broken Pieces definitely fits that description. Sometimes sad, sometimes delightful, often touching, this is a lovely story, set in a small town.

First Paragraph(s):
    My father stood at my front door as if he'd simply run out for bread and forgotten his keys.
    A slight gray stubble dappled his chin and the line of his jaw, his appearance a far cry from the practiced, clean-shaven face he sported the one time I saw him each year.
    Frustration and disbelief tangled inside me.

Teaser (from 8% on my Kindle):
    I worked alone. I lived alone. I liked it that way.

Genre: Women's Fiction
Book Length: 284 Pages
Amazon Link: Broken Pieces
Author's Website: www.KathleenLong.com

Synopsis (from Goodreads):
    Destiny Jones is doing just fine on her own, thanks. From her thriving one-woman carpentry business to the loving support of her small-town community, Destiny has constructed a life as sturdy and polished as her best cabinets. Twenty years ago, Destiny’s world collapsed when her mother died and her father, Albert, abandoned his daughter to pursue acting in New York. His devastating exit taught Destiny a lesson in self-reliance that has kept her safe—and alone—ever since.
    Now Albert Jones is back, begging for a second chance. Destiny suspects he’s simply staging another performance, starring himself as the prodigal father. Should she act on her misgivings? Or listen to her inner child, who still yearns for a family? When Albert divulges a shocking secret, Destiny’s life will again be turned upside down.
    Kathleen Long’s warm, wise novel reveals the armor that has protected us in the past is often the very thing we must shed to fully live and love. 

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Jenn of Books and A Beat. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at Books and A Beat

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger

The Real Mother - The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings on Friday

    What makes a family?
   Sara has given up her dream of medical school to take care of her orphaned brother and sisters. Then their other flaky brother shows up, after years of absence, and upsets the home Sara has created, making promises to his younger siblings to win their support. The plot shows Sara's challenge of dealing with a stressful job, acting as a parent to her siblings, dealing with a brother she doesn't trust, and balancing those responsibilities with creating a satisfying life for herself. Lots of drama but believable.
     The Real Mother was published in 2005, but it is still relevant. The plot kept me interested and I cared about the characters. I also enjoyed the writing. This is a book I'll read again.

Book Beginning:
Sara arrived at the airline terminal as the Corcorans walked out, trailed by a young man pushing a cart piled with luggage. She wedged her car between taxis and stepped out to open the trunk and the two passenger doors before extending her hand to Lew Corcoran. "Sara Elliott," she said. "Welcome to Chicago."

Friday 56 (from Page 156 in my hardback):
Her glance lingered on Sara, taking in her brown-and-ivory checked shirt and narrow khaki pants, sleeker and probably a lot more expensive than any clothes worn by the marchers, then came back to Reuben. "Organized it? I don't know...."

Genre: Women's Fiction
Book Length: 421 Pages
Amazon Link: The Real Mother
Author Website: Judith Michael (Judith Barnard & Michael Fain)

Synopsis (from Amazon):

Sara Elliott has been forced to give up the life she's dreamed of to return home to Chicago and take charge of her sisters and brother. She finds a job and settles into the house she grew up in, building a life for ten-year-old Doug and teenagers Carrie and Abby.

But Sara has another brother, Mack, now twenty, who left home three years earlier. Suddenly he reappears, cheerful and unconcerned, as if he had never broken his promise to stay and help Sara with the children and the house. With bewildering volatility, Mack swings from kindness to cruelty, affection to hostility, keeping the family always on edge, his past and present a mystery. But with expensive gifts, storytelling, and the excitement of his presence, he is winning over the children, and sometimes the four of them stand together against Sara.

Mack challenges all Sara has achieved in trying to be a mother and keep her family together. And he does it at a time when she is confronted by crises at work that spill over into her home. Suddenly, events seem to be speeding past and Sara feels she cannot slow them down to regain control.

And then, when she thinks her life has room only for work and family, she meets Reuben Lister, a client from New York. As Sara helps him find and furnish a house and explore the city, they discover a closeness neither has known before and share new ways of dealing with conflicts each has always faced alone. Together, Sara and Reuben find answers to the questions: What is a mother? What is a parent? What is a family?

This is Judith Michael's most poignant exploration of the pressures and joys facing modern adults and children, in a story that will resonate with everyone for its universal themes and discoveries.

                

Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
Click HERE to join other Friday 56 bloggers (sponsored by Freda's Voice)

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion - Teaser Tuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph

     At age 59, Sookie Poole learns that she was adopted and everything she believes to be true about her ancestry is a lie. This book is about how Sookie deals with that information. Does she track down her birth mother? Does she confess her knowledge to the demanding woman who raised her? What does she tell her kids? With her trademark humor and insight, Fannie Flagg weaves Sookie's story with that of her birth mother, an aviatrix who served in the WASP's in World War II.
    I'll admit up front: I'm a fan of Fannie Flagg's writing. I like her Southern voice, her quirky characters, and her down-to-earth stories. The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion didn't disappoint. While being entertained by this delightful story, I also learned a little about the Women Airforce Service Pilots and their role in World War II and gained insight into the ways the folks "back home" supported the war effort.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Historical / Humor
Book Length: 347 Pages (hardback)
Amazon Link: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion
Author Website: Fannie Flagg Books

First Chapter / First Paragraph: There's a brief prologue, but I'm taking my excerpt from the opening of Chapter One:

A Most Unusual Week
Point Clear, Alabama
Monday, June 6, 2005
76° and Sunny

     Mrs. Earle Poole, Jr., better known to friends and family as Sookie, was driving home from the Birds-R-Us store out on Highway 98 with one ten-pound bag of sunflower seeds and one ten-pound bag of wild bird seed and not her usual weekly purchase for the past fifteen years of one twenty-pound bag of Pretty Boy Wild Bird Seed and Sunflower Mix. As she had explained to Mr. Nadleshaft, she was worried that the smaller birds were still not getting enough to eat. Every morning lately, the minute she filled her feeders, the larger, more aggressive blue jays would swoop in and scare the little birds all away.

Teaser (from Page 211):
     Fritzi desperately wanted to pass this inspection, but something snapped. She gunned the engines and as soon as she got her altitude, she suddenly flipped the plane over and flew upside down while Miller, who was now suspended in midair and hanging on to his shoulder straps, screamed for dear life, "Turn over! Turn over! Goddamn it!" When she did, Fritzi did a barrel roll, shot straight up, and then did her famous death drop into fifteen spins straight down.

Synopsis:
     Mrs. Sookie Poole of Point Clear, Alabama, has just married off the last of her daughters and is looking forward to relaxing and perhaps traveling with her husband, Earle. The only thing left to contend with is her mother, the formidable Lenore Simmons Krackenberry. Lenore may be a lot of fun for other people, but is, for the most part, an overbearing presence for her daughter. Then one day, quite by accident, Sookie discovers a secret about her mother’s past that knocks her for a loop and suddenly calls into question everything she ever thought she knew about herself, her family, and her future.
     Sookie begins a search for answers that takes her to California, the Midwest, and back in time, to the 1940s, when an irrepressible woman named Fritzi takes on the job of running her family’s filling station. Soon truck drivers are changing their routes to fill up at the All-Girl Filling Station. Then, Fritzi sees an opportunity for an even more groundbreaking adventure. As Sookie learns about the adventures of the girls at the All-Girl Filling Station, she finds herself with new inspiration for her own life.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Jenn of Books and A Beat. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please!

Link at Books and A Beat

First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by Bibliophile By The Sea. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.

Link at BibliophileByTheSea

Twitter: @SandyNachlinger

Facebook: sandy.nachlinger