This past month I traveled through the Sahara desert, fought for my life in the 2nd and 3rd Hunger Game books, and went back to WWII for a moment in time...read on~
Sarah Challis - Footprints in the Sand
What happens when you finish someone else's journey?
Emily and Clemmie Kingsley are two cousins who grew up in England. The story opens at their Great Aunt Mary's funeral with Emily crying not only over the death of Aunt Mary but also over the demise of her relationship with her boyfriend. When the service is over the girls find the in her will, Aunt Mary has left instruction that the two of them are to take her ashes and scatter them in a remote area of the Sahara desert. The journey will take a long ride into the desert by camel and Emily does not want to go while Clemmie cannot wait to get started. No one in the family can fathom why Aunt Mary would possibly want to be scattered in the desert, but a visit to Mary's lifelong friend, Miss Timmis, reveals that yes, Mary had spent some time in Africa when she was a young woman. She tells the girls that she doesn't know anything more but it seems that maybe she does. Why and what isn't she telling? Their journey begins as the girls meet up with a small, and eccentric, tour group for the first leg of the trip. Once into the desert, the group breaks up, everyone going their own ways and the girls meet up with the incredible men of the desert who will take them to Aunt Mary's final resting place. Is this trip just a wild goose chase or will the reasons the girls aunt wanted to rest here reveal themselves along the way?
I really enjoyed this book and liked the characters and missed them when they were gone!
I really enjoyed this book and liked the characters and missed them when they were gone!
Karen Fisher-Alaniz - Breaking the Code
A Father's Secret, a Daughter's Journey,
and the Question that
Changed Everything
Breaking the Code is a heart wrenching story of a daughter trying to understand her father who had been in WWII. The author, Karen, grew up hearing the same few stories of her dad's time in the service, and paying little attention to those stories. Now he is 81 years old and has placed in her care four notebooks filled with the letters that he sent home to his parents during those years. Karen knows what a treasure this is and sets out to simply transcribe her fathers tiny and sometimes hard to read handwriting so that her kids can one day have a copy of these letters. Having always been told that her dad had just a simple office job during the war, Karen is shocked to find out that his stating that he wasn't really in the war is not the case at all. In a time of high censorship of all military mail, Karen must read between the lines and ask her dad just the right questions to find out the real story. In doing so, she and her mom both become worried about her dad. Seems that he is having nightmares and seems to be in a state of grief after some of their sessions. Murray, Karens dad, simply will not answer some of the questions and others seems to just not remember the answers. Some sixty years after the war has ended, Murray is dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and memories that have been long buried are coming to the surface.
This is an incredible true story that brought me to tears more than once. It is told with complete love and compassion for a father the daughter barely knew. Highy recommended!
These were both really good books - I then picked up Catching Fire and Mockinjay, the 2nd and 3rd books in the Hunger Games series and devoured them. Both very good as well.
Now tell me, where has your reading taken you? And don't forget to pop over to Some of a Kind for more good reads!
