Saints in Limbo by River Jordan

Saints in Limbo
by River Jordan
WaterBrook Press, 2009, 352 pp.

Saints in Limbo by River Jordan is a prime example of why I love to read. Every hundred or so perfectly acceptable, entertaining, thrilling, inspirational books - with a half dozen real duds thrown in for good measure - you come upon a true gem. They are the ones you search for, wait for and hold your breath for as you read that first page, those first words, that first chapter. I had this feeling from the beginning paragraphs of Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. It was the feeling that the words were so perfectly chosen, the descriptions and dialogue so clear and true that I could truly "experience" the book. It's true that certain books will click with certain people based on their background and preferences, however I think there is more to it than that. I think there is an art to stringing together the right words so that ink on a page comes alive and almost approaches a kind of poetry. Am I gushing? Well, yeah, I would admit that but I really think this one is worth it. There are strong, sassy women and humor, magic and suspense. This is a sweet story that never approaches saccharine. It has a moral but it does not preach. Although I mentioned The Poisonwood Bible, I can truly say that part of the charm of this work is that I cannot think of any book I have ever read that was quite like it. If you like good storytelling I recommend that you not miss this book.

All the Pretty Dead Girls by John Manning

All the Pretty Dead Girls
by John Manning
Pinnacle Books, 2009.

Going off to college for the first time is always an adventure, but for Sue Barlow, it promises to be so much more. She will finally be on her own, away from the stifling grasp of the grandparents who raised her after the death of her mother. Sue hopes that Wilbourne College, her mother's alma mater in upstate New York, will give her both the freedom that she has never enjoyed and information about the parents she never knew. What she finds there is far more terrifying than she could have ever imagined.

All the Pretty Dead Girls by John Manning reminds me of a Dean Koontz novel or something by Clive Barker, without being quite as tightly written. The plot moves along nicely, for the most part, except for the back and forth between the past and the present, which I found a little disconcerting at times. This is definitely a "page-turner" in the most positive way and the twists of the plot surprised me more than a few times. It is not predictable or boring. I found the characters believable and pretty well fully-formed and although their dialogue sometimes falls a little flat the characters are not. I found myself conjuring them up in my mind... seeing what they would look and sound like.

I liked All the Pretty Dead Girls even though it runs a little more toward horror than I normally go these days. I was drawn in from the first page and read it straight through to the last. If you are a fan of Dean Koontz or Clive Barker, or even Peter Straub, I think you will enjoy All the Pretty Dead Girls.

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir by Neil White

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir
by Neil White
William Morrow, 304 pp, $25.99
On sale: June 2009

Located on a drowsy bend of the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana, Carville is home to the National Hansen's Disease Museum. It was named for political personality James Carville's grandfather and was home to the Federal Medical Center, a minimum security facility for non-violent federal prisoners and inmates with chronic health problems. Carville, more importantly, was also home to the nation's only leprosarium, which in it's latter days - to both White's astonishment and my own - served as housing for leprosy patients and Federal inmates in the same building as well as an order of nuns within the grounds.

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is Neil White's memoir of the time he served as a inmate at the Federal Medical Center at Carville. Written as a series of chronological anecdotes, Sanctuary takes us through the circumstances that led to White's conviction for bank fraud, his sudden introduction to leprosy and his life as an inmate at Carville.

For anyone who is astounded at the very idea of leprosy - or Hansen's disease, as it is now called -- being a malady of the modern era (current US Department of Health statistics estimate that there are 6,500 cases as of this writing), this book will give you some insight into a few patient's experiences as well as dispelling some common myths about the disease. One woman's story is especially touching. Ella Bounds was committed to Carville at the age of 12, delivered to the front gate by her father, never to see her family again. Ella, in her 80's at the time of White's incarceration, had spent the vast majority of her life in the institution.

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts is not a scholarly study of Hansen's disease in America, although it gives patients stricken with the disease a very human face. Moreso this is the story of one man's growth -- a sort of mid-life "coming of age" tale -- and a window into one mans very unique experience. By turns it is funny, intriquing, irreverent, shocking, and profoundly moving. Sanctuary is highly readable and deeply satisfying.

The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The Strain
by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
William Morrow, 2009, 416 pp.

What a scary, thrilling ride! I took The Strain to bed the first night to read before going to sleep. Big mistake. It became my daylight-only book because it scared me so badly that I could not read it after dark. It reminded me of my first Stephen King novels - the ones that kept me awake at night and made me jump at the slightest noise. The story is well written and well paced. I did not find any slow passages and as I read I could see it, as it will no doubt one day be, on the big screen - a real blockbuster. These are not nice vampires and you are not going to fall in love with them. I had forgotten how much fun a good scary book can be and I look forward to the next installment with bated breath and delectable dread.

The Pleasure of My Company: A Novella by Steve Martin

The Pleasure of My Company: A Novella
by Steve Martin
Hyperion, 2003, 176 pp.

I found The Pleasure of My Company to be a charming, tender and witty little book. Daniel Pecan Cambridge (our neurotic narrator) proves that we are all just a little more alike than we might think. I also enjoyed Mr. Martin's previous novella, Shopgirl. As a person who delights in experiencing the world, and most definitely books, in a visual and tactile way, there is something that I just loved about these slim volumes. I suppose that means I will never stand in line to buy a Kindle (yikes!) because for me a book is a total experience and this whole package is a true delight.

Guest Shot by David Locke

Guest Shot
by David Locke
Jove, 2001, 432 pp.

Exciting thriller written by New York Times best-selling art historian Robert Rosenblum under the pseudonym David Locke. A booking agent for a nationally televised talk show receives a call from someone offering to be a guest on the show. The Mystery Guest, as he comes to call himself, intends to discuss a murder that he is going to commit. He then plans to "do the deed" and subsequently return to the show to talk about it. And - even more chilling - he believes that he will be able do it over and over without being caught. The premise is a good one for a suspense novel and it is well-written with good plot twists and fully formed characters. I enjoyed every quickly turned page!

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton

The Wednesday Sisters
by Meg Waite Clayton
Ballantine Books, 2008, 304 pp.


The Wednesday Sisters is the endearing story of five young women in 1960's California, transplants from around the country, meeting by chance in the neighborhood park. Each woman comes from a different background and brings a unique backstory to the group. They share a love of the Miss America pageant, their families and books. A chance remark leads to the start of a writing group and becomes a springboard for the bonds of friendships to form. NASA, the Women's Movement, questions of race and religion, anti-war protests all form the historical context in which the five mature as women, as mothers and wives, and as writers.

This is the third "chick-lit" novel I have read in just a little over twice as many months that uses a relatively recent era as it's backdrop. Each of them used pop culture to represent the time period...songs, events, clothing styles, fads, etc. One of them used pop iconography to such an extreme that it distracted the reader from the storyline and called attention to itself in a kind of irritating pop culture name-dropping. In the second, the story was a bit more evident but the pop culture references were still pesky and overabundant. In The Wednesday Sisters, though, the historical references work to both inform and propel the story forward. The characters have depth and voice and even though I was not immediately drawn to all of them, I was drawn in by their stories and I wanted to know more about each of them. Most of all, I suppose, I wanted to know why Brett always wears white gloves. But then, didn't everybody?

I would recommend this as a great book club pick!

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
by Jamie Ford
Ballantine Books, 2009, 304 pp.


Henry Lee is Chinese. The button on his coat will tell you that if you see him on the street, walking to his all-white prep school. His home in Seattle's Chinatown sits only blocks from Nihonmachi, the Japanese section of the city, but to his parents Nihonmachi is a no-mans land filled with evil, murderous people. America and China are both at war with Japan and the atrocities in his homeland only serve to further demonize the Japanese in Henry's fathers eyes. Henry's parents want him to be American and in an excess of zeal for this goal ban him from speaking Cantonese at home even though that is all they understand. This is the first of many disconnects for Henry. He is caught between cultures, teased and laughed at by the other Chinese children for going to the white school and then bullied at that school by his white classmates. Drawn to the jazz he hears on his walks to and from school, Henry strikes up a friendship with Sheldon, a black street musician. The music touches a place in Henry that nothing else has in his young life. In school, as a "scholarship" student, Henry must work in the school cafeteria every day at lunch with Miss Beatty, the gruff lunch lady. This is yet another opportunity for his fellow students to make fun of him as Miss Beatty leaves him to serve lunch alone while she goes out for her break as soon as he gets there. Then one day, there is another scholarship student in the cafeteria to help him, an Asian girl named Keiko. Henry is no longer the only Asian in the school, but he is still the only Chinese student.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet deals with many things - race and ethnicity, family, loss, Seattle jazz and the Japanese internment during the war. However, the true essence of this novel is a love story. It is a story of hope against great odds and the surprise and joy of finding something that you thought was lost forever. This is a beautifully written novel. I highly recommend it.

Whitethorn Woods
by Maeve Binchy
Anchor reprint, 2008, 446 pp.

As the section headings indicate, Maeve Binchy's most recent book is all about "The Road, The Woods and the Well." The Road in question is a new bypass around the town of Rossmore, Ireland. The Woods are the Whitethorn Woods of the title which the proposed road will go right through. And the Well , located within Whitethorn Woods, is a shrine to St. Anne that will be completely destroyed if the road is built.

St. Anne's Well has touched many people over the years. There is great disagreement as to the holy and/or magical properties of the cave and it's ancient statue. The whitethorn bushes at its entrance are adorned with the petitions of it's visitors. Prayers and pictures, bits of paper pinned to the branches by the hundreds. The bypass is progress - the new, the convenient. The well is history, the mystical, the ancient. One will surely destroy the other if it is allowed to come to pass.

The story is told by many voices, each chapter a different character. All have some link to the town of Rossmore. Some live there, some were born there, some have visited and some have done desperate things there. Each character's bit of the story leads in some way to the next snippet. The chapters are also organized in pairs where the consecutive chapters are a husband and wife or a brother and sister or friends and you are privileged with two viewpoints of roughly the same story. The whole thing sounds like a very complicated way to tell a story. The delightful thing is that it is not at all a complicated or difficult way to read a story. I found that as each person's bit of the story unfolded, I had no problem remembering their relationship to previous characters and tales. The story almost blooms in the mind, each piece adding to the whole picture at a comfortable, easy pace, jolted here and there with the staccato of shocking enlightenments. It is Maeve Binchy at her best.