Customer Comments

This is a wonderful novel - I enjoyed it tremendously (and so much more than I expected to!). Following the lives of two sisters who immigrate from Ireland to Boston in the late 1950s, it moves between time periods and covers a host of complex issues (e.g., the Catholic church, pregnancy and adoption) thoughtfully and movingly. I've read other books by J. Courtney Sullivan and wasn't particularly impressed given all the hype, but this one really swept me up.

This is a brutal read. It hurts, as it should, every time another young woman's story is introduced and we as readers see the ways our legal system violate young women who have already been violated in the most horrific ways. Krakauer has written another incredibly well researched, moving, painful book - hopefully one that leads to change for young women in Missoula and far beyond.

I was drawn in initially by the geography of the book, and for the first 50 pages or so wondered if I was going to make it through to the end--but the story took off after that, and did so with gusto. There are a lot of different plot lines (and social issues) thrown into this story set in the late 1950s in Fargo/Moorhead, and the author does a pretty good job with them even though at times the writing got a little overwrought for my tastes. Still, it's a good read--especially if you're looking for new fiction with a little bit more gravity than a straight up beach read!

Prudence is a haunting piece of historical fiction, weaving issues of race, culture, love, and war throughout. It's not a particularly happy read, nor a light one--but it is a good and important one, and it will catch your attention from the first page until the last.

For those like me who binge read the Little House books more times than you can count, Pioneer Girl is an eye-opening read. It's Laura Ingalls Wilder's original autobiography, and in this impressive/massive book you see how fact became fiction in her later works. The annotations are full of interesting background, photos, and history--but it's helpful to find a rhythm for how to digest it all. Hats off to the South Dakota Historical Society Press for this undertaking and shining new light on these beloved stories.

This is a devastating read, both for the glimpse it gives us into one brilliant young man's life--and Rob Peace truly seemed to be brilliant--and for its insight into the combination of systemic factors (lasting legacies of poverty, racism, and violence) and personal decisions that led his life to such an early end. It's not an easy or uplifting read, knowing already how this book and Rob's life ends, but it's a very worthwhile one.