The Witch’s Kind, by Louisa Morgan. Redhook Books, 2019

A magical realism/historical fantasy story, The Witch’s Kind completely captivated me. It’s the story of Barrie Anne Blyth, a young woman in the time of WW 2, and her aunt Charlotte, who raised her. Barrie has a past with a man who turned out to be not what he seemed: a college man who joined the service when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  This past led her to a run-down farm that her husband bought without telling her; while she knows nothing of farming, she quickly learns from neighbors, books, and just doing. Soon she has a thriving food garden and flock of hens, right on the Hood Canal. When her husband disappears, she continues the farm on her own. When her dog, Willow, finds a new born baby on the beach, she takes it in, and Aunt Charlotte comes to stay with her a lot of the time.



The baby, Emma, isn’t quite “normal”, but Barrie loves her. She lost her own baby after only a few hours, so she’s ready for a baby, no matter what. Her long lost husband, Will, returns and has his own plans for the child. Government agents hang around the small town and the farm. Barrie and Charlotte invent stories to cover Emma’s origin, and try to keep her secret covered. There is never a time to feel secure and relax.



I LOVED this book. It’s a hard one to classify; my first thought was magical realism, but there is also sci-fi, women’s fiction, historical fantasy… so much, blended together to get a book that I sat up most of the night reading. The descriptions of the town, the farm, the canal, Port Townsend, the Olympic Peninsula, are all wonderful and bring things to life. It’s an area I love anyway, and to see it through the lens of the 40s was great. I loved Aunt Charlotte. I liked Barrie, too, although I was impatient with her in much of the flashbacks, as she was learning about life and growing up. Five stars.

Rebellion, by Molly Patterson. Harper, 2017

Four women in four eras are at the center of this book. A Christian missionary, Addie, in China in the years leading up to the Boxer Rebellion; Louisa, Addie’s sister who left a middle class family to homestead in the middle of nowhere; Hazel, Louisa’s granddaughter who is suddenly left a widow with a farm to run; and Juanlan, a young Chinese woman who as just graduated college but has to return home to help care for her father. Each of these women steps outside the life that is expected of them, and of course has to live with the consequences of those quiet rebellions.

The book moves at a pretty slow pace. The minutia of daily life is related- when the rebellions are quiet, one has to look at the ordinary to see it contrast with the extraordinary. The descriptions are brilliant; they bring the scenes to life. But… pretty slow. It rather reminds me of a novel from the late 18^th century, actually, with its pacing and long descriptions. Which is fine; just be forewarned.

What I didn’t like was that I figured the four strands of narrative would come together in the end. It was obvious what the relationships between Addie, Louisa, and Hazel were, but the relationship that Juanlan has with the three of them is quite nebulous- only that she lives in roughly the same area of China that Addie lived in. I expected that at some point some long hidden letters would appear or something that meshed them all. No such luck. The ended was quite a letdown.

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Inheriting Edith, by Zoe Fishman. William Morrow, 2016

Maggie is a professional house cleaner with a degree in English. She’s had other jobs, but she prefers cleaning in Manhattan- it pays a lot better, it gives her time to think, and she has been a compulsive cleaner since she was a child. She is the single mother of a precocious two year old, and has just gotten the surprise of her life: she’s inherited the Sag Harbor beach house and money of a friend and former client that she has been estranged from for years. Along with the house comes Edith, the 82 year old mother with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. The will states that Edith is to remain in the house she shared with her bestselling novelist daughter, who has taken her own life.

Edith and Maggie both have severe doubts about this situation. Edith feels she needs no help, nor does she need strangers in her house. Maggie feels she’s in over her head with caring for an elder. But they gingerly build a relationship, and Edith asks Maggie to help her write down her life story before she forgets it. In the process, they both realize they have things in their pasts that they need to deal with before it’s too late.

I read the story in a day; it’s fast reading and fairly compelling. It’s sad to watch Edith losing ground so quickly, but fun to learn about her past. I did have to wonder why the 2 year old took up so much of the book; obviously she’s the most important thing for Maggie, but I felt her constant chattering slowed the story down. I guess it did show how overwhelmed by the child Maggie is! The obligatory love interest might as well not be there; he really adds nothing to the story. I would have preferred to learn more about Edith’s past, and about her dead daughter. A good beach read. 

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Stars Over Sunset Boulevard, by Susan Meissner. New American Library, 2016

 Violet, Audrey, and Bert are three young people with dreams in 1938 Hollywood, all working at Selznick International studio. Violet wants a husband. Audrey wants to be a film star. Bert wants to go back to college and become an ornithologist. Bert also dreams of Audrey; he has such a massive crush on her he can’t see anything but her. And Audrey and Violet have secrets as well as dreams; secrets that could easily destroy those dreams.

Their lives play out as ‘Gone With the Wind’ gets filmed at the studio, starting with the massive burning of Atlanta scenes. After the movie finishes, Audrey and Bert leave Selznick Studio, but the three remain close friends. The story takes us through WW II and after. Audrey and Violet have times when their friendship threatens to implode, but somehow things work out. The story is framed with short chapters set in 2012, when Violet’s family is cleaning out the bungalow where she and Audrey lived, and a vintage hat accidently gets sent to the consignment store. The hat is one anyone would recognize: it’s the green velvet hat Scarlet O’Hara made out of her mother’s drapes. How did this come to be in Violet’s possession?

I was disappointed. I couldn’t manage to like Violet; she came across as sweet and innocent at first but turned out to be very manipulative. Audrey was okay, but kind of flat. Bert is just a prop for the women to use. They just didn’t seem real and the dialogue is stilted. It’s almost like the book was a first draft, and the author needed to go back and flesh out the people. Not unreadable but only 3 out of 5 stars. I did really enjoy the parts about the filming of GWTW. 

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