Valentin Brekher Brekher itibaren Dedza, Malavi itibaren Dedza, Malavi

I loved this book. The protagonist Mercy captures your heart immediately. Keener succeeds in portraying the anguish of life in the back woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains so well that you feel instantly drawn into the world she creates. The hypnotic style of her writing draws you into the beauty and drama of life's harshest lessons. It is a tale of survival and growth.

A look into the Parisian ex-pat life of the Hemingway/Stein crowd. Serve with coffee. Setting: sidewalk cafés, cozy salons.

This was an ambitious first novel by Kate Furnivall, turning her mother’s experiences as a White Russian refugee in China into an amazing, page-turner of a book. The story revolves around Lydia Ivanova, a teenage girl living in Junchow, China in 1928. Her father has presumably been killed during the Russian revolution and her mother is struggling to make a living giving piano concerts. China is a land in turmoil. Chiang Kai-shek and the Koumintang army are in a power struggle against the Communists, and somewhere in the middle are strong Chinese warlords, getting rich off of the opium trade. It’s a dangerous place to be for young Lydia, and she soon finds herself in serious trouble. I was impressed with the largess of the story Furnivall created. As the story wound itself into the Chinese underworld, I found I could not put it down. Her gift of detail and historical storytelling, found me appreciating this newcomer to my world of historical fiction. Loved it!

Very quick read; fun and engaging. Unforturnatly a bit corny and obvious at times, with a blatant feminist agenda that is sometimes thought-provoking, but often nauseating.