207 Book Talk

In The Last Green Valley, Mark Sullivan brings us the story of the Martel family and their long, arduous escape from the evils of the end of World War II. The ethnic German family, including parents Emil and Adeline and their two young sons, Walt and Will, make the decision to leave behind the life they’ve built for themselves in Ukraine to escape the inevitability of once again living under Stalin’s barbaric control.  Their journey towards freedom in Adeline’s dream of a lush green valley where their family can settle once and for all is a constant life or death struggle.  We follow the Martel’s and their extended family’s travels through several European countries in a search for a better life. This extraordinary tale is told from multiple points of view and through alternating timelines. Sullivan’s descriptions of the people, places, and events really brought the story to life for this reader, and I found myself skimming ahead at certain points, feeling dread over what was ...

The Speed of Light  centers on Simone, a young woman dealing with a recent diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. She is navigating what the disease will mean for her life moving forward, and worrying about her job at a local university that is currently going through budget cuts. Simone meets a nice guy one night on her way to visit her parents when her car breaks down and she accepts a ride from him. Connor seems great, but is romance in the cards with everything else going on in her life at the moment?                                                                             Flash forward to just over a year later, on a work day that starts like any other, and sudden gunshots turn the ordinary into a fight for survival. Facing down degenerative nerve damage as her disease progresses is somet...

In One Year Gone by Avery Bishop, Jessica Moore’s teenage daughter Bronwyn (Wyn to her friends) goes missing shortly after a pep rally at her high school. Jessica is living every mothers worst nightmare and does not believe her daughter ran away from home, which is the conclusion local police have arrived at. When, a year after her disappearance, Jessica’s cell phone goes off in the middle of the night, she never expects it to be a series of text messages from Wyn, but that is exactly what she sees on her screen. Her daughter is reaching out after all this time and lets her mom know she has been abducted and needs help. Jessica launches into action and this time she won't let anyone get in the way of her finding her daughter. This story is told in alternating timelines and from both Jessica and Wyn’s points of view. I did like the changes between present day and the past, as well as the perspectives of both mother and daughter taking center stage. I thought Avery Bishop wrote her ...