A powerful, sobering tale of loss and finding family
935791
Cage of the Red Dog is a excellent book. The story takes you to the streets, alleys, dumpsters and park benches of the homeless. P.D. Bruns uses vibrant and gritty details to open our eyes to the challenges "rough sleepers" face each and every day. You will undoubtedly be touched by the relationship Ernest and Sam develop as they work together to find shelter, a place to sleep, a next meal. They become much more than friends. They are truly family in every sense of the word. I recommend you join Ernest and Sam on their journey by reading this book.
1097289
This novel tells the story of the average American family living in the nightmare of an all too common phenomenon: child abduction. Three-year-old Ben disappears, and we as readers ache along with the family, desperate for any clue as to what has become of him, hoping that against all odds he will be found. When he isn't, we see how his family and those involved in the search for him are left to pick up the pieces and struggle to move on with life. This novel is so honest with its heartfelt, raw, not-so-pretty emotion that the reader cannot help but feel a part of the story, and when the circle is completed, we are are left with a new outlook on family dynamics in general, and on the role of the parent in particular. This is an outstanding book in its true emotional grit, honest to goodness story, and full, fleshed-out characters: people we feel we know, people we feel we are. Parents will come away from this novel with a much greater respect for their role in their children's lives. The movie rights to this one have been sold, and should the movie be as strong as the novel, it will be a blockbuster.
4743008
Sure to resonate with readers, Life After is a poignant and powerful tale!  With its ripped-from-the-headlines plot, this compelling story kept me engrossed as I read and beckoned each time I set the book aside.  Katie Ganshert deftly brings her characters to life, and my heart ached for Autumn and the Elliotts.  Their struggles and emotions were real and raw, and I loved the beauty and complexity of their journey!

I received a complimentary copy of this book.  No review was required, and all thoughts expressed are my own.
1100453
This is not a sad story, although you might expect it. Instead you will be swept away into family dynamics of parenting, marriage, family, community, love and loss -- and come out stronger and more resilient. The biggest pang of loss here, is the list of lives lost at the end, which brings home that this is, in fact, so much more than one family's story, but instead a chronicle of what happened once, and happens again and again to people not as talented as Nye to document such love, strength, resilience, and absence.
4532148
A truly touching tale, without the sentimentality I've seen some authors try to jam down our throats in recent books. The novel is accessibly written with prose just as forceful and colorful as the verbose Faulkner/McCarthy while being both more cinematic and more lyrical. It's somewhat reminiscent of Papa Hemingway with the moral complexities, but it's also about family and honor and commitment, in a lawless Texas of the 1870s.

The two main characters are a 70+ year old news reader and a frightened, but courageous, well-drawn 10-year-old girl who spent the last 4 years as part of the Kiowa tribe of the plains that captured her after killing her Alsatian German-speaking parents and sister. The trip to return the girl to her family in San Antonio, Texas, is about 2 weeks: a vivid adventure, at times humorous, at others haunting and compelling, and always a pleasure as we get to see a special bond form between this old man whose family has all moved away from him and this young girl who has now been taken from two families in her brief 10 years.
4467226
Reiken's first novel is slightly reminiscent of The Deep End of the Ocean in that it deals with a family coming to terms with the disappearance of a child. The Odd Sea concentrates upon Philip's perceptions and we grow with him in his journey to understand and accept his older brother's vanishing act. The Shumway family all deal with their grief in different ways, all of which are believable. Because we see all this through Philip's eyes, we have a child's sense of movement and detachment.  Very powerfully and skillfully told.
182110
The Pieces We Keep is a fascinating tale of the pain of loss, mother's love, the power of an innocent child, the possibility of reincarnation and that truncated lives might be reclaimed in later lifetimes. I began it in the deepest part of the Christmas season when my life was as full and rich as it could possibly be. The book claimed me from the opening and led me, finally, to an near all-nighter. The characters are well-developed and believable. The story skates well along the thin line between preaching reincarnation and allowing the reader to accept that it *might* be possible. The author finally commits--sort of--in the final chapter, but does so in an excellently-written display of subtlety where this reader would have preferred a more direct connection. Thus, the four stars rather than five. Nonetheless, this is a 'can't-put-it-down' read!
2935288
Beautifully rendered memoir of a quintessential family struck by tragedy. From the first page, the story grips you and doesnt let go. Steeped in family values and tradition, Kelly Kittel paints a lovely and textured landscape filled love and the lives of her young family set against the backdrop of their home in Oregon living in the midst of her husbands controlling family, and her east coast roots in Rhode Island and Maine.

We are quickly caught up in the cadence of Kellys life when tragedy strikes, and her youngest son Noah dies at the hand of her troubled and unrepentant 16-year old niece. Unspeakable grief consumes them as they look forward to a ray of hope aheadthe impending birth of their next child, Jonah. When tragedy strikes mercilessly a second time, this time at the hands of a negligent physician, rather than supporting Kelly and her family in a time when they need it most, the cruel divisiveness of her sister-in-law Cody drives Kellys extended family to unjustly turn against her.

A unique and wonderful voice, Kelly carries us on her journey. Her childrens stories, both living and dead, are reflected through the lens of a mothers love, taking us from the light into the darkest corners of loss and back again. Kelly and her familys strength is inspirational beyond words as we share these tragedies as our own at Kellys side, at times wishing we could intervene on her behalf with the people who should have known remorse and compassion during this period of devastation grief.

An undisputed must read!
3224843
4.5 stars .

This book is about the Jewish experience and no doubt , if a reader is Jewish, they may understand this in a different way , feel something about the story in a different way than I did . In all honesty there were things about this book that I did not understand, so I'll talk about those things that I did - that this was a book about  grief and love and family relationships and friendship and people trying to discover themselves.

This is about dealing with this grief and the sadness that the  loss of a loved carries. This is the story of how they cope - 11 year old Lev , his sister , 13 year old Sammy and David, their dad. These are lost kids with a beautiful brother - sister bond , while their father remains on the outside , grieving in his own way ,  by his own choice separating himself from his children .

While I did not fully understand the mysticism , climbing the Tree of Life , I found that it didn't keep me from finding a series of beautiful moments which reflect our humanity no matter who you are or what you believe: the lemons , the silent phone  calls , a note in a bookcase, how the Glassman's knew they were meant to be together, the silence of understanding between a brother and a sister, the perceptive and lovely lists a young boy writes in his journal .  It didn't keep me from connecting with Lev , my favorite character or the other characters I came to love - Mr Katz, the Hasidic Jew who  builds  a Tree of Knowledge out of toilet paper rolls and floss and painted leaves and Mr Grossman , the Jewish teacher , a Holocaust survivor and his math whiz wife .

Don't be afraid to pick up this book because you don't think you'll understand. You would miss a beautiful, meaningful story in this debut novel .

Thanks to William Morrow/HarperCollins and Edelweiss for this ARC.
2768661
Sara Zarr's HOW TO SAVE A LIFE is a moving, poignant and realistic look at a family torn apart by a death -- but it's not a (completely) somber tale. It's sad, yes, and my eyes filled with tears several times. But the overall message is still one of hope -- that good things can come from terrible circumstances. That we can go on and rebuild and live again.

At first, Jill is a difficult character to like. She's angry and sullen and so stereotypically teenager-y, but her attitude is compounded by her all-consuming grief. As we get to know more about Mac, the family patriarch, we share in Jill and Robin's grief. And it's hard not to be a little surprised by Mandy, a character who manages to be both hugely pregnant and shockingly innocent at the same time. I loved that, despite everything, Mandy was so hopeful and optimistic. I felt close to both teens by the close of the book.

Alternating between Mandy and Jill's points of view, the story's main tension comes from Mandy's decision-making -- will she really give up her baby? Will she tell Robin and Jill the actual circumstances she faced back in Nebraska? How will she remain active in her child's life -- especially without legal permission? As Jill and Robin became more and more attached to Mandy, I started to get antsy. Was she who she claimed to be? Was Mandy going to break off another piece of their glued-together hearts?

Seeking those answers was what propelled me along, even when HOW TO SAVE A LIFE was a sad and difficult read. I ultimately finished the book on a high note, though, and liked the delicious ambiguity of the ending. When I realized how some of the many problems could be solved, I felt an intense sense of relief. Sara Zarr is a powerful writer who bonds you to her characters, and I've never forgotten SWEETHEARTS, the young adult book that launched me back into the genre as an adult.

Fans of stories exploring family dynamics, moral dilemmas and young adult tropes will enjoy HOW TO SAVE A LIFE. And like most young adult reads, this one isn't just for teens; readers of all ages will appreciate and relate to Zarr's impressionable, vulnerable characters.
2677774
Anna knows she was born to save her sisters life, but after thirteen years she is ready to make her own medical decisions.  Her sister has had almost-terminal cancer for as long as she can remember and her family revolves around the diagnosis. As Anna seeks legal representation, the routine of her family is tossed upside down and her sisters prognosis hangs in the balance.

From the very first sentence, Jodi Picoult has weaved a powerful tale, centered around every parents worst nightmare. With one child sick, this family tries to do everything they can to keep her alive, as most adults can relate too. However, the authors ability to switch points-of-view between the various characters, illustrates this situation from each heartbreaking side. Readers will appreciate the different fonts that are used to emphasize each characters personality, as well as the memories that help develop the plot. The commanding, gripping and controversial ending will leave readers debating long-after they have read the book.

Notes:
This review was written for the bookstore, My Sister's Books.
This review was originally posted on the Ariesgrl Book Reviews website.
4687962
As painful as this narrative is, I could not put it down. On an obvious level, it deals literally with a traumatic accident that is very specific to this family, but with a nuanced candor concerning its differential impact on husband, wife and the remaining son. It explores being the embodiment of "a parent's worst nightmare", of not only losing all that this child represented in the past and the present but also losing their future together. It is refreshingly free of blame and shame. What elevates this book to a more universal relevance is that it places a magnifying lens over what it means to be human, as illness, aging, and unexpected losses are the very texture of life. As a psychologist/psychoanalytic myself, I have used my understanding of tragedy to heal the suffering of others. This book not only deepened my understanding of this particular loss, but what it shares in common with all loss. The author speaks to the toxicity he experienced about sharing the details of the loss and the almost inevitable aftermath of isolation that follows. So, I highly recommend this book not only for it's compelling and well written story, but because it also is an inspiration as to the possibility of healing and moving on. It feels particularly relevant to clinicans working with trauma.
2270290
Where does the loneliness we feel take us? How do we recover from terrible loss and redeem guilt? And how do we live the life we've been given? In this beautiful sophomore novel, Elizabeth Strout (AMY AND ISABELLE) carefully constructs ABIDE WITH ME, which explores faith, community, numbing loss, the tremendous power of words used carelessly, and redemption.

It's 1959, and the threat of nuclear destruction is uppermost in the minds of Americans. Against the gray cold backdrop of northern Maine, Reverend Tyler Caskey deals with his own devastation as he grieves the loss of his colorful and lively wife, Lauren. The once vibrant and articulate pastor is now reduced to reading old sermons to his Congregationalist church on Sunday mornings and is barely able to cope with each day. His family is splintered: his youngest daughter, Jeannie, has been parceled out to his unloving mother to raise, and Katherine has become alternately sullen and silent or screaming and acting out in kindergarten.

Caskey's housekeeper, Connie Hatch, tries to keeps order in the 100-year-old farmhouse in the small town of West Annett that serves as parsonage, but her own terrible secrets are a ticking time bomb. Tyler's congregation is becoming impatient with his grief; their gossip is about to involve him in events that will change his perceptions of his life and his abilities, while causing him to face a few secrets of his own. Dealing with problems is something he's not particularly good at. Lauren's final words ring in his ears: "Tyler, you're such a coward, you know."

The colorless town, with its rather colorless meals, is nevertheless richly portrayed, from the gold gingko leaves in the autumn to such lovely phrases as "her earlier visit to his office hung over his shoulders like a cape dampened by rain." Strout adeptly handles the flashbacks that slowly flesh out Tyler and Lauren's courtship and early marriage, and the terrible days leading up to her death. Some very specific sexual details, however, will limit conservative readers' enjoyment of the book.

One of Strout's strengths is her well-developed characters. Their interior lives are much more complex than the simplicity they present to the world, and their secrets darker than anyone would suspect. Strout makes them interesting yet believable. Connie is 46 years old, part Indian, with beautiful green eyes and a birthmark on the side of her nose, "red as raspberry jam." She alternately repels the reader and attracts. Tyler's difficult mother, who criticizes and repeats the same stories over and over again, will be recognizable as a character type most of us have encountered, especially in the church.

Tyler is a curious mixture of strength and vulnerability. "It might have been this quality, as much as any other, that continued to make the minister so popular with his congregation: these moments of sudden bafflement, deep uncertainty. Surfacing from a man who appeared always in control of himself, who shouldered his misfortunes with the gentle air of an abstracted acceptance, these instances of open-faced bewilderment allowed people, particularly women but by no means only women, to view him as surprisingly and suddenly vulnerable..." Tyler lives in fear that he will lose his connection to God, "The Feeling," those moments of transcendence that have been so important to him. It's our bond with Tyler and especially his relationship with his daughter, Katherine, that ensures we won't put the book down until the very last page.

Redemption and yearning are symbolized by the old hymn lyrics from Abide with Me, which appear throughout the book: "Abide with me; fast falls the eventide...The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide." Tyler comes to find that he isn't given an easy life, but it's a life in which God offers his presence. Readers who enjoyed Gail Godwin's EVENTIDE, Kent Haruf's PLAINSONG or Susan Howatch's Starbridge series should find this novel an absorbing pleasure

  --- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby (phrelanzer@aol.com)
3934796
An in-depth look at the differing degrees of agony  that families feel for their missing loved ones.  A story that will be hard to forget.
2446411
Sometimes it may be better not to find a person who has been "lost" for many years;  after two lives have separated, the reunion may be more painful than a continuing separation.
 It's impossible to rebuild the  past as if it never happened;  starting over is a painful process of giving  up much and then learning sometimes disturbing new knowledge.  Treichel  examines this question with skill and sensitivity;  the book may well be a  metaphor for his own life, it is certainly an example of regaining the  Germany that was "lost" after World War II, and it is an essay on the  meaning of loss for anyone and everyone.
 The story is simple.  When  his family fled the advancing Russians in 1945, his brother was "lost"  which his mother was busy being raped by Russian soldiers.  "Arnold"  disappeared in the throng of refugees.  For years, his mother grieved her  loss;  Treichel, like every young boy, was apprehensive about the return of  a bigger, stronger older brother.  Years were spent in the search.
  Meanwhile, like West Germany, the family prospered.  In the time before DNA  testing, the family went through complicated procedures with painstaking  German thoroughness to determine parentage.  As most mothers would  understand, the search became an obsession for his mother.  It was like the  national obsession with the reunification of Germany  --  in the 1950's,  posters in Germany would often show a nation torn apart and summed up with  one world, "Niemals."  (Never)
 German reunification symbolized the  end of the Cold War.  Germans, East and West, were ecstatic.  Since then,  reality has slowly settled upon both Germanies.  The "Ossies," the former  East Germans, resent being patronized by wealthy West Germans.  In the  West, complaints have been raised about the cost and the "ingratitude" of  the Ossies.
 Think of this in relationm to a family reunification  after years of separation;  having lived two separate lives, it's a little  difficult to move into a seamless family unity.  Who changes?  How much  must be surrendered to restore the family?  Is the unity built only on  giving up habits long acquired?
 Whether read as an allegory, or a  family story, this story raises a number of gripping questions.  When the  book opens, there are easy and heart-warming answers waiting to slide  effortlessly off the page; by the time it ends, there are no easy answers.  In America, it may well serve as an examination of children given up for  adoption ten or twenty or thrity years ago.
 Iof nothing else, it is  a reminder that separation and loss does occur.  It's a look at how reunion  is handled;  for the person still suffering the loss, the end may well be  unsatisfactory.  For anyone who's gone through a reunion, the end may well  be comforting.
4867965
Losing a child is a parent's worst nightmare. When the death is the result of the recklessness of another child, it makes reconciling the incomprehensible loss with the understandable quest for justice even more difficult.

In All the Numbers, high school English teacher and single mother Ellen Banks looks forward to summers so she and her sons, James and Daniel, can reconnect. The culmination of each vacation is a week-long visit to a friend's summer home at Lake Augusta in southern Wisconsin.  On this particular day, the adults are relaxing with wine and snacks while their children are frolicking in the lake when tragedy strikes. Eleven-year-old James is killed when a sixteen-year-old on a jet ski gets too close to the swimmers.

The first novel by Judy Merrill Larsen, herself a high school English teacher in St. Louis, Missouri, All the Numbers is a well-crafted account of a grief-stricken mother slowly coming to terms with her loss and the futile need for retribution. It is only when she begins to see the driver of the jet ski as a real person, a child much like her own, that she comes to realize that punishing him will not ease her pain, it will only add to the pain that he and his family are already suffering.

Although the back-cover synopsis alerts the reader to what's to come, it's nevertheless unnerving when it actually happens. The first 50 pages of the book are devoted to character development, and there is just enough detail to connect the reader to each character, leading one to hope against hope for a different result.

For the most part, the characters ring true, with the possible exception of Bob, the attorney who takes Ellen's case. The fact that he is the perfect man for the job and seemingly for Ellen as well (his divorce was the result of differing views on children--he wanted them, his wife did not) made his character seem contrived. The comparisons to Atticus Finch, Ellen's favorite fictional character, further fueled my cynicism. But Larsen's outstanding job with Ellen, her parents, her cad-of-an-ex-husband, Tim, and the other major characters made it easy to overlook any problem I had with Bob.

It would be easy for a story like this to become maudlin; however, Larsen never allows that to happen. Instead, the reader feels as if they are listening to a good friend talk about their child's untimely death. The raw emotions Ellen displays in dealing with the tragedy and the apparent indifference of the legal system keep the story from becoming clichd.

All the Numbers may be Judy Merrill Larsen's first novel, but it's easy to see this teacher has done her homework.
3914230
Elizabeth Marro takes an unflinching look at the real costs of war and our all-too-human willingness to impose separation rather than accept the full brunt of the pain we inflict. At first you may wish to avert your own gaze as well -- tragedy arrives early in these pages -- but by then it's too late to turn away.  You already care too much about these characters to abandon them. And so you join Ruth and Casey, two wary, damaged souls thrown together by fate, on a road trip you will never forget.  What begins in the trauma of a life shattered leads, in the end, to tentative steps toward healing and reconnection. Casualties pulls you in with a sharp, painful tug -- and then it holds you in its grip till the very last page.