A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy *****

A Week in Winter by Maeve Binchy opens with the story of Chicky who leaves Stoneybridge on the west coast of Ireland to run away and live with Walter in New York City—against the advice of her friends and family. The affair is short, but she is too embarrassed to admit defeat. After twenty years of working hard in NYC, she returns to buy Stone House and turns it into a hotel. The title is the opening week at the hotel, and the remainder book is nine more vignettes that all end with the opening week. Positive and uplifting.

The people who end up at Stone House have all had challenges and eventually overcome them with positive attitudes and hard work.

Rigger was in reform school and reoffended, but after hiding out in Stoneybridge, he works hard and ends up with a good job, wife, and child.

Winnie wants to settle down with Teddy, but his mother Lillian doesn’t want to release him. After getting lost in Stoneybridge, they make peace.

Many of the women are single and not happy with that, but they all make peace with their lives or discover boyfriends in surprising situations.

Several of the male characters are irresponsible, disloyal, and dishonest.

The ten vignettes (from the publisher):  

            Chicky Starr

            Rigger (a bad boy turned good who is handy around the house)

            Orla, Chicky’s niece (a whiz at business)

            Winnie and Lillian are forced into taking a holiday together

            John, the American movie star, thinks he has arrived incognito

            Nicola and Henry, shaken by seeing too much death practicing medicine

            Anders hates his father’s business but has a real talent for music (nyckelharpa)

            Walls, disappointed to have won this second-prize Stone House holiday

            Miss Nell Howe, a retired schoolteacher, criticizes everything and leaves a day early

            Freda, the librarian, is afraid of her psychic visions

Sharing a week with this unlikely cast of characters is pure joy, full of Maeve’s trademark warmth and humor. Once again, she embraces us with her grand storytelling.

Amazon has at least four books with this title.

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The Sacred Bridge by Anne Hillerman ****

The Sacred Bridge by Anne Hillerman is the seventh in the series featuring Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito, except Leaphorn is on vacation in Japan, so only Chee and Manuelito. Chee is tracking down a murder up by Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon Dam. Manuelito is undercover at an illegal marijuana farm.  These books are a mixture of Navajo lore and life in the four-corners area and detective stories.

Chee is concerned with the desecration of Navajo heritage by the Glen Canyon Dam starting back in the 1960s and the continued damage by tourists. I lived in Salt Lake City while Lake Powell was being filled and recall all the issues discussed in this volume. The LA Times reported in February 2023 arguments to drain Lake Powell. The issue of environmental and Navajo cultural damage is still a current topic as it has been since the dam was completed in 1966.

Manuelito is concerned with Navajo land and water being used to grow hemp for CBD. I don’t know much about this, but I assume anything that uses water within the Navajo Nation and the Southwest, in general, is important.

Chee’s crime was a murder that involved jealousy, resentment, and misunderstanding. This is what I expected from Anne Hillerman. Manuelito deals with murderous evil men. I was surprised by the level of violence.

Except for a few scenes in Manuelito’s story, I found this to be a pleasant return to the area around southeast Utah.

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A Face for Picasso by Ariel Henley *****

A Face for Picasso by Ariel Henley is a memoir about coming of age with Crouzon Syndrome- a rare craniofacial disorder that deformed Ariel’s face. In the author’s words, she was “ugly.” The book is an emotional roller coaster from the heights where the author overcomes her medical and social challenges, to the depths where I was so angry at the insensitivity and cruelty of children and adults. Much of the book is about seventh grade, not the best of times for most of us, but most harrowing for an “ugly” girl. Nothing is sugar-coated. In between reliving the author’s trials are many insightful observations on beauty in our society. Highly recommended.

At twelve years old, I was already used to people identifying my flaws and commenting on my ugliness. It comes with the territory of being born with a facial difference as a result of Crouzon syndrome—a rare craniofacial disorder where the bones in the head fuse prematurely. My eyes were too far apart and too crooked, my nose too big. My jaw was too far back, my ears too low.

As I read this book, I thought of Black Lives Matter. Before BLM, many people, including myself, imagined that the United States had made progress since MLK, but thanks to BLM we had our eyes opened. In the same way, I had thought that all the talk of anti-bullying campaigns in the schools had helped, this memoir shows that the bullies continue, and even worse they are still aided and abetted by the adults who should know better.

Crouzon’s Syndrome might be rare (1 in 60,000 births or 60 cases annually in the US), but this memoir has an important lesson for anyone seeking healthcare. Self-advocacy is required. You know your situation much better than anyone else. The author’s mother knew her twin daughters had a serious condition, but she had to see many doctors over the period of a year before she got the proper diagnosis. Many of those doctors denied there was a problem. First, they thought we were epileptic. Then they thought we had Down syndrome. Then they suggested a host of other conditions, but none of them explained our symptoms. Later they had to fly to France for a consultation. For any condition, self-advocacy is important and this book is an excellent practical example.

This book also talks about the challenges faced by women in a world where external appearances are the first thing that anyone sees, and often the only thing.

Summary: If you are interested in feminism, medicine, equity, or simply living at peace with others, this book has a lesson for you.

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The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines ****

Ernest J. Gaines’s TheAutobiography of Miss Jane Pittman spans 100 years from Miss Jane’s childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Through the Civil War, reconstruction, and Jim Crow, Miss Jane survives the everyday deprivation and abuse of Black life in Louisiana. She does this with dignity and optimism. Her story ends with the murder of The One who was leading the people to a protest. The protest goes ahead: “Just a little piece of him is dead,” I said. “The rest of him is waiting for us in Bayonne.” Miss Jane is optimistic to the end, ignorant of what will happen after the 1960s, and the need for Black Lives Matter fifty years later. I found the book’s celebration of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement as a turning point sad.

The book includes a wealth of historical detail as a backdrop to Miss Jane’s life in Louisiana. It follows the middle road, not whitewashing the treatment of Blacks living in Louisiana following reconstruction, but also not focusing on the horrific abuse of murder, lynching, and terror. Black people are murdered and raped, but Miss Jane’s memories are dominated by water fountains, restrooms, the lack of schools, and opportunities. Her narrative of 100 years of non-lethal indignities and deprivations wears on the reader's soul and shows the depth of injustice. I found this to be the strength of the book.

However, from the perspective of the 21^st century, I found Jane’s acceptance and optimism, profoundly sad. The failure of reconstruction, the short attention span of the North, and the lack of political will that allowed Jim Crow, and the Ku Klux Klan in the late 19^th century are still true today. Miss Jane could live to 175 and the book would not be much different.

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