The Sunday Salon - Motherhood

Mother’s Day.  How appropriate - motherhood has been consuming my thoughts of late, even more than usual.  During the past week, concerns about my son have been brewing in my mind, along with questions about my own role as a mother and daughter.  And while none have been completely resolved, I am beginning to wrap my mind around them and carry on.  So my week away from writing ends here, on Mother’s Day, tucked into a corner table at Bigby’s Coffee Shop with my laptop, my book, and a tall house blend.  Welcome to The Sunday Salon.

As I look back on my reading over the past week (actually, over the past year and more) I’m amazed at how often mothering figures into themes and plots.  At this moment, A Family Daughter (Maile Meloy) sits beside me on the table, while The Optimist’s Daughter (Eudora Welty) lies open on my reading chair at home.   Just last week I finished Hungry Hill, a memoir by Carole O’Malley Gaunt, who writes about the way her mother’s death has shaped her life, and the lives of her seven brothers.  Before that, Run, Ann Patchett’s tale of two boys and two mothers.   Earlier in the year, there was Men and Angels (Mary Gordon), The God of Animals (Aryn Kyle), Hearts and Minds (Rosy Thornton), and of course The Good Mother (Sue Miller).  Motherhood figures in all these novels, in some larger than others, but there nevertheless.

So my reading history begs the question -are we drawn to the books we need to read?  Have I been shunning my favorite mysteries and biographies in favor of novels about motherhood and family relationships?  Is my subconscious mind attracting me toward books that might reveal some insight I need to hear?

I know that books have often played themselves out in my life in odd and unexplainable ways.  When I was a teenager, one of my favorite books was Madeleine L’Engle’s Camilla.  Part of the plot involves the title character, a young girl, who discovers her father is having an affair.  Although I barely understood the meaning of the word, the implications fascinated me, as did the ramifications on Camilla.  I even used this premise as the basis for a short story of my own, a story that won a Scholastic Writing Award.  

Little did I know that 25 years later I would be living Camilla’s story. 

A while back, I wrote a post about a book which cut so close to the quick of my own concerns that I set it aside unfinished.  Some of the events in that book are being manifested in my life right now, and so it seems my prescience was warranted to some degree once again.

Mothers and books.

Powerful influences, aren’t they?

So tell me, has your life ever imitated a book?  And do you ever find yourself drawn to books that you “need” to read?

 

 

Silent Sunday

Dear friends, it may be silent here for a few days.  Don’t be alarmed…the Ravenous Reader is just resting.  Life has been a bit much of late, and even books have failed to comfort.

I will return.

 

Weekly Geeks-By Any Other Name

 Those intrepid souls who joined Dewey’s Weekly Geeks were set an initial challenge to go round and visit new blogs from the roster. I must admit, I felt a bit like the new girl in school assigned to introduce myself to the class, but I set my shyness aside and gave it a go.  I was quite surprised to notice several others on the list who shared my name (or at least a version of it), so I decided to pop by and meet them first.  After all, it’s a bit easier to go up to someone and say Hi Becca! (or Rebecca or Becky), my name’s Becca too!

• Becca writes The Inside Cover, which she uses to share her opinion about books she’s read in hopes that other readers will discover what’s “inside the cover” before they spend their hard earned money (and time!)  She’s also set herself a goal of reading 52 books this year!  (Go Becca!)
• Becky writes Becky’s Book Review, and she says she’s “always loved reading,” so there’s something else we definitely have in common!  Her post today offers a multi-media mini challenge which is very clever - go have a look.
• Rebecca (aka Inciteful Mama) has a very clever take on the world of books, and modern family life, and her posts had me laughing out loud.

Imagine, three Becca’s (well, four if you count me) among the Weekly Geeks. 

And who knows, there could be more, just hiding behind an alias like I do (smiles).

Wouldn’t you like to be a Weekly Geek too?  It’s actually quite a bit cooler than the name would lead you to expect.

And your name doesn’t have to be Becca - really, it doesn’t.

 

The Sunday Salon- On Unaccustomed Earth

It’s a busy morning here at my home in southwest Florida.  I’m preparing Sunday lunch for six, and given the location, we’re eating Mexicali style, with taco salad, seven layer bean dip, and of course margarita’s.  But all is under control in the kitchen, the table on the lanai is set with festive plasticware, and there’s time to sit and visit.  Let’s try one of these mango margarita’s shall we, just to make sure they taste allright (winks). 

Welcome to Sunday Salon, the tropical edition.

I bought myself a present the other day…Unaccustomed Earth, the latest collection of short stories by Jhunpa Lahiri.   Of all the bookstacks I own, you will find only one other short story collection…Interpreter of Maladies,by Jhumpa Lahriri.  Any guesses about my favorite short story author?  And remember when I didn’t even care for short stories?

i read the title story immediately, and it was absolutely gorgeous.  It lingered in my mind all day, lingered so powerfully that I occasionally picked the book up as I passed by just to dip in and re-read a paragraph or a page.

While her father was in the shower, she made tea.  It was a ritual she liked, a formal recognition of the day turning into evening in spite of the sun not setting.  When she was on her own, these hours passed arbitrarily.  She was grateful for the opportunity to sit on the porch with her father, with the teapot and the bowl of salted cashews and the plate of Nice biscuits, looking at the lake and listening to the vast breeze work its way through the treetops, a grander version of the way Akash used to sigh when he was a baby, full of contentment, in the depths of sleep.  The leaves flickered as if with internal light, shivering though the air was not cold.  Akash was asleep, exhausted from playing outdoors all day, and the house was filled with silence.

Unaccustomed Earth tells the story of Ruma, a young mother in a new city. Her father comes to visit, his first visit since the death of Ruma’s mother and he’s keeping a secret from Ruma - he’s become involved with another woman.  Meanwhile, Ruma struggles to find her equilibrium in this new life, trying to reach out to her father, yet not quite knowing how.  It’s just an equisite story, exploring the connection between parent and child on several levels, and the process of taking root in new ground both emotionally and physically.

Every story in this collection is a masterpiece.  As much as I loved The Namesake, Lahiri’s novel, she is an absolute master of the short story, and I can see why she returned to the genre for her second book.  She may well be this generation’s Alice Munroe, the writer who makes a name for herself with an entire oeuvre of short stories.  With this collection (as with Interpreter of Maladies) I never for a second felt the sense of incompleteness short stories sometimes lend.  Her characters are so complex, her prose so dense and delectable, the reader feels as if they are immersed in a full length novel.

But by far the most riveting of all are the three linked stories that make up Part II of the book.  In Hema and Kaushik, we follow the fates of two  people who first meet as children when their parents share a house one winter.  Their lives separate and intersect in unusual and occasionally painful ways, until destiny brings them together one last time. 

From the moment they arrived together at Paola and Edo’s, it was assumed, by the other guests, that they were old friends.  One of the guests had even assumed they were lovers, asking how long they had been together, how they had met.  “Our parents,” Kaushik had said lightly, but Hema thought back, saddened by those two simple words.  She was aware that he had not corrected the guest’s assumption.  Aware, too, of the way he looked at her across the table during lunch, surprised by the allure that had come to her late.  He looked the same to her, that was the astonishing thing.  The sharp faced boy who had stepped reluctantly into her parents home.  Only the eyes appeared tired, the skin surrounding them now darker, faintly bruised.  She still remembered her first impression of him…remembered the ridiculous attraction she had felt that night when she was thirteen years old, and that she had so secretly nurtured during the weeks they lived together.  It was as if no time had passed.

Hema and Kaushik is a brilliant elegy to life and to love, to family relationships and the power of fate, and the ways they interact.  It could easily stand alone as a poignant and perfect novella.

As in Interpreter of Maladies, all Lahiri’s characters have the common thread of nationality to bind them.  But their ethnicity is not necessarily the “unaccustomed earth” to which the title refers.  Most of them are traversing new emotional territory, much of it regarding loss - of a parent, a partner, an ideal.  Relationships are explored in painstaking detail, as in “Only Goodness,” where an older sister tries her best to provide her younger brother with “the perfect childhood,” and is so bitterly disappointed when his alcoholism prevents them from having the adult relationship she desires.

 Lahiri chose a quotation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s as the epigraph for this collection: “Human nature will not flourish…if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.  My children…shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.”  This proves to be the perfect metaphor for each of Lahiri’s characters, in a volume of elegant, emotionally exquisite stories.

Oh, there goes the bell…time for lunch.  Enjoy your Sunday reading~I’ll pop in on you all later!

Life on the Run

i have been reading, my friends, really i have.  as a matter of fact, i’ve finished two (and 1/2) books this week, which is a rather good average considering that life has intruded quite rudely in several ways.  a multitude of things to deal with, as usual, in the life of this ravenous reader.

certainly my life pales in comparison with the characters in Run, Ann Patchett’s latest.  once again (as she did so admirably in Bel Canto) Patchett begins with one cataclysmic event and sends the ripples spreading far and wide, illuminating character and relationships in unbelievable and magic ways.

on a snowy night in Boston, Bernard Doyle is standing outside arguing with his son Tip when the driver of an SUV loses control and careens in their direction.  suddenly, Tip is dashed violently to the ground - not by the impact of the vehicle, but by the force of a woman throwing herself in front of him to push him from harm’s way.  this action sets in motion a chain of events, of secrets revealed and lives unraveled, that has life changing implications for the Doyle family.  for the woman is actually Tip (and his brother Teddy’s) birth mother, and she lives just a stone’s throw away from the wealthy white Irish Catholic family who adopted her two sons nearly 20 years before.  silently and unobtrusively, she has observed the boys lives, maintaining her sense of connection with them while raising her younger daughter, Kenya.

with this heroic action, she catapults her presence into their lives even as she lies unconscious in her hospital bed, forcing them to consider their past and future in ways they have never done before.

it is Kenya, though, who gives the book its title.  Kenya, who, at the age of 11, has the ability to run like no one has ever seen.  it’s not just a talent, it’s a primordial need, an ache to fly over the ground with gazelle like grace and speed.  running is what she was meant to do, and she feels it with every fiber of her being. 

What would it be like to know at eleven the great thing you could do? thinks Tip, watching Kenya run the Harvard track.  This was what Doyle had always wanted for them: a mission, a calling.  Kenya running was pure ability; strength, grace, concentration, and the odd thing was that Ip believed her skill must be transferable.  It wasn’t just that he was watching her run: he was watching who she was.  It seemed perfectly reasonable to think that she could take this energy and pour it into anything.

for Tip and Teddy (the smart and the sweet one respectively) think a great deal about their calling in life, their responsibility to their father and to the world.  they’ve been fortunate, and they know it, raised by a prominent Boston politician, favored sons of the well known and beloved Mayor Doyle.  not even Doyle’s natural son, Sullivan, garners as much attention and affection as these two small black children, adopted only a short time before Doyle’s wife Bernadette is diagnosed with cancer, sickens, and dies.  their lives have become Doyle’s greatest mission, and they go to great lengths to fulfill it for him.

Run is full of convoluted connections between disparate groups of people.  as she did in Bel Canto, Patchett illustrates the way these connections exist beneath the surface and can be excavated and nurtured under the right conditions. 

Nothing exists in a vacuum - each moment, everything that happens in the past and present has some meaning for the future.  And no one exists in a vacuum either - we are molded and influenced by the presence of everyone we’ve ever loved, or hated, or missed, or longed for.

a reviewer wrote of Bel Canto that Patchett “created her own universe.”  she’s done that again in Run, for the reader becomes completely immersed in this tightly packed story which takes place over the course of 24 hours but spans a lifetime in the hearts of its characters.

 

Run

by Ann Patchett

copyright 2007, by Haper Collins

296 pages

 

 

The Sunday Salon-Life Matters

Dear friends, I had so much planned to tell you about this morning.  I had thought to talk about Run, Anne Patchett’s latest novel which I finished earlier this week.  And I was all set to reveal my latest book purchase Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri’s just published collection of short stories - and imagine, the Ravenous Reader actually bought a collection of short stories! (winks)

But you know the saying about the best laid plans, and I’m voluntarily sending my agley in order to tell you about an essay I read yesterday which lodged in my heart and simply won’t budge. 

Welcome to The Sunday Salon.  Make sure you have some tissue.

It was purely chance that led me to A Matter of Life and Death, Marjorie Williams’s brilliant account of her diagnosis with liver cancer in 2001 and her daily battle against the disease.   I was out and about yesterday, doing familiar Saturday afternoon errands, when I chanced upon a huge Bargain Bookstore.  Of course, I couldn’t resist (who could?) and I was mightily pleased with myself for snagging a bagful of books for under $15.00.

Among them was a copy of The Best American Essays, 2006 edition.  I find a well written essay extremely satisfying, especially as it reveals the heart and mind of its author.  A good essay can acquaint us with the particular experience or ideas of one person in a way that makes them applicable to our own lives.  As Lauren Slater, editor of this collection described it, “Essay writing is about transcribing the often convoluted process of thought, leaving your own brand of breadcrumbs in the forest so that those who want to can find their way to your door.”

Yesterday afternoon I followed the trail directly to Marjorie Williams door whilst sitting on my back porch in the sunshine, my little dogs sunning themselves on a rug at my feet, the sounds of spring hovering in the air around me - a chorus of birdsong, happy voices of children heard and not seen, the grumbling motor of some ambitious homeowner’s lawn mower. 

Williams published regularly in Vanity Fair, the Op-Ed page of the Washington Post, and Slate magazines.  Renowned for her political profiles, her acerbic wit, and her feminist outlook, she won the respect of her colleagues of both genders.

When I started reading, I knew nothing about her.  But I was sucked into her writing immediately, its matter of factness; it’s plain yet eloquent language.  “The beast first showed its face benignly, in the late June warmth of a California swimming pool, and it would take me more than a year to know it for what it was.”

As I continued reading about that year and beyond, smiling sometimes-“Is there a case to be made against my freaking out right now?” she asks one physician-and crying at others-“Tumors so widespread automatically “stage” my cancer at IV (b). There is no V and there is no c”- I become completely lost in this tale, thinking about this woman who was 43 at the time of her diagnosis, who had two small children yet to raise, who had a marvelous career and the intelligence to feed the world something vital and important.  A woman who was writing so plainly about a diagnosis of doom, yet so deeply affecting was her prose that I felt as if she were sitting next to me on my sunny back porch.

About midway through the essay – diagnosis complete, treatments under way, family and friends coming to terms with her prognosis-I turned to the back of the book which contains a brief biography of each author.  “Williams” was, of course, the last one.  

“Marjorie Williams was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1958 and died in Washington DC, in 2005.”

Slam.

I let the book fall face down in my lap.  I really believe I was expecting it to say she had miraculously beaten the disease and continued to write and play with her son and daughter, so real was the sound of her voice in my head as I read the words she had written just months before her death.

And so, dear friends, in spite of the warmth of spring, I was chilled for the remainder of the day.  I finished the essay, which I later found was excerpted from The Woman at the Washington Zoo, a collection of her columns and profiles published posthumously.

But I was reminded of two things yesterday afternoon – how much life matters, just the dailiness of it, the moment to moment victories and blessings.  And the way words render immortality in a way little else can, keep the writer’s heart and thoughts alive forever.

“Sometimes I feel immortal,” Williams wrote. “Whatever happens to me now, I’ve gained the knowledge some people never gain, that my span is finite, and I still have the chance to rise, and rise, to life’s generosity.  But at other times I feel trapped, cursed by my specific awareness of the guillotine blade poised above my neck.  At those times I resent you- or the seven other people at dinner with me, or my husband deep in sleep beside me –for the fact that you may never even catch sight of the blade assigned to you.”

Have a wonderful Sunday my friends.  Laugh, love, read, and be well.

 

The Senator’s Wife

Marriage is a funny thing, isn’t it?  I’ve been married for nearly 32 years - not as long as Delia Naughton, the title character of The Senator’s Wife, Sue Miller’s latest novel - but almost.  Long enough, at any rate, to understand exactly what she meant by these words:

She’d thought he was immortal, that he’d always be there.  Or at least as long as she was.  She’d always thought that there was time, ample time ahead, to work things out, to find a way to be together again at some point.  It must still be that she thought of them as belonging together.  That he was her destiny.

Destiny - something that was meant to be, pre-ordained by some higher power.  Perhaps every young couple in love sees themselves that way at some point in their relationship.  Certainly Delia felt that from the beginning about Tom, the poor young lawyer who had scrabbled his way through school and was determined to change the world.  She proudly hitched herself to his star, followed him as he climbed through the turbulent political times of the 60’s and 70’s, coming to power in an era of war and corruption in government, an era not so unlike our own.   She played the “good wife,” the hostess, the perfect political asset, in spite of Tom’s numerous infidelities.

The Senator’s Wife is Delia’s story - but it’s also Meri’s story, the  woman who moves into the other half of Delia’s duplex.  Meri and Nathan have just commenced their life journey as a couple, and as Meri becomes more deeply embroiled in Delia’s life the two women’s stories begin to move along parallel lines.  Meri finds herself enthralled with Delia’s life -present and past-and attaches herself to the older woman in a way that becomes unhealthy and even dangerous. 

She wanted Delia to change her.  She had sought Delia out, she had thought she could learn from her.  It always seemed to Meri that she was about to understand something large and important about how to be in the world from Delia.

In an earlier post, I quoted my friend Barbara’s impression about this novel.  By the end, she was “just so mad at every character,” she said, virtually tossing the book at me as if daring me to read it.  And I can see why.  There’s a part of me that wants to grab Delia by the shoulders and shake her, rattle that fascination for Tom Naughton right out of her head-and her loins.  Because even after years of infidelity, of living apart and leading virtually separate lives, she’s drawn to him like a moth to flame.  He burns her every time, and yet she still relishes those rare moments when they come together, a weekend here and there when they meet and rekindle the passion that still exists between them. 

And a woman of her age, too, I found myself thinking, compressing my lips in disapproval. 

But what’s wrong with a 70 year old woman who still desires her husband?  Is that what makes us angry?  Or is it that a 70 year old woman still desires a husband who has cheated on her, who has treated her badly even as he professes to still love her best in all the world?

And then there’s Meri, whose behavior (of which I will not reveal the specifics) cannot, in the end, be justified as anything except pure selfishness, no matter how much one would like to excuse her because of her background, her insecurity, her postpartum depression.  No matter that she becomes “transformed,” “recharged,” “lighter in her life” because of it.  I remember a similar reaction to Anna, The Good Motherof Miller’s first novel.  Miller’s characters have a tendency to become senseless over sex, and, though it makes me feel prudish to admit it, I find myself irritated with them for their shallow, hedonistic behaviors. Perhaps it says something about my own character - that I’m reluctant to accept the power a physical relationship can have.

In that same post I referred to earlier, I mentioned an interview with Sue Miller where she spoke about the way her writing focuses on people’s ability to change (or not) and what happens to them because of it.  That idea is certainly a major theme in this novel.  Neither Delia nor Tom can change their behaviors or their feelings for each other. 

And with all this, when she saw him in the lobby of the hotel in New York, what she felt was simply joy.  He was Tom.  He was so himself, so unchanged. So beautiful to her.  Perhaps they both felt it simultaneously, the sense of all that was familiar and inalterably beloved, no matter what happened between them.  She wept then.  She wept when he first held her, she wept when they made love.

Perhaps that’s the gift (or the curse) of long years of marriage, the wonderful and terrible intertwining of lives that cannot be undone, cannot be changed.  Certainly that’s the gift Meri wants for her relationship with Nathan, the stability she never had before and barely dares hope to achieve now. 

The novel brings all these longings and desires to a very interesting conclusion, prodding the reader to re-think their attitudes about marriage and relationships.  The Senator’s Wife is a complex and engrossing novel with rich and complicated characters, a novel well worth reading.

Even if it does make you a little angry.

 The Senator’s Wife

by Sue Miller

published 2008, by Alfred Knopf

306 pages

 

Booking Through Thursday

Today, for Booking Through Thursday, Nithin asks:

I’ve always wondered what other people do when they come across a word/phrase that they’ve never heard before. I mean, do they jot it down on paper so they can look it up later, or do they stop reading to look it up on the dictionary/google it or do they just continue reading and forget about the word?

oh dear, i’m afraid this will sound terribly snobbish, but i rarely come across words i can’t define, if not exactly at least by inference from the surrounding text.

perhaps it’s because i’m old and have been reading for so very long.

or perhaps my choice of reading matter is a bit too comfortable, and i should search out more erudite authors.

when i was very young, i kept a notebook (see previous post) where i could jot down words i didn’t know.

and just now i’m feeling a mighty urge to run for my dictionary and start reading so I can locate some new, unfamiliar words to add to my vocabulary.

because we can never have too many words at our disposal, can we?

 

 

Notebookism

i tried, i really did.

the ravenous reader had to make a quick run into the office supply store for printer ink yesterday.  i tried very hard to ignore the stacks of spiral notebooks in all shades and colors, the sky high rows of three ring binders, the plethora of sticky notepads in fun shapes and sizes.

you see, the ravenous reader loves all things bookish, and that includes notebookish too.

most definitely. 

my love for notebooks started long, long ago, with Harriet the Spy and her secret notebook.  a black marbled composition book marked “keep out! this means you!” it contained her deepest, darkest, most meanly kept secrets.  of course, i immediately procured one for myself, and proudly toted it around throughout my sixth grade year.  (lucky for me, i was a popular enough little girl that the notebook became a fad rather than a stigma.)

then, Charlotte Bronte’s fabled handmade miniature notebooks, in which she along with Anne, Emily, and Branwell created their childhood epic stories about the imaginary kingdoms of Angria and Gondal, sparked a new interest in creating one of a kind notebooks of my own in which to pen my tales of death and psychological disorder (my favorite topics as a teenage writer!)

so you probably will not be surprised to learn i have a soaring notebookstack squirreled away in my cupboard.  it includes about 10 spiral notebooks with rainbow pastel colored vinyl covers which i use for my personal journal, a 5×7 cloth bound, unlined book which i think about using colored pencils to sketch in (notice, i said think about), a beautiful lined journal imprinted with a design of music staves and filled with thick, glossy paper which begs for a fountain pen, a pile of post-it notepads which end up sticking out all over my review books…obviously, i have no need of any more notebooks.

but you see, right there in the office max was a rack piled high with brand new moleskines.  i have not indulged in one of these little black beauties in quite a while. but how i love them, with their ribbon marker, their secret pocket in the back, their lovely stitched binding that falls open so nicely.

sigh.

of course i had to bring one home with me.

what else is a notebookish person to do?

now tell me, do you have a notebookstack? what’s in yours?

 

The Sunday Salon-Comfort Food

 
 

Winter has been so reluctant to let go its grip this year, and I rose this morning to leaden skies and snow flurries dotting the air.  But you needn’t fear,  for the heat has been turned on, there’s (always!) fresh coffee brewing, and I’ve just dished up a ham and swiss cheese frittata that smells heavenly. Come in, and welcome to the Sunday Salon.

Forgive me if I’m still yawning, for last night was one of those nights when sleep was troubled by nagging worries.  I found myself up at 3:30 a.m., wrapped in a soft blanket, indulging in Comfort Food -edible and literal.  You see, my usual comfort food remedy for middle-of-the-night wakefulness is a hot cup of cocoa, and cinnamon toast.  Add a good book into the mix, and I can usually lull myself back to sleep.

And last night’s reading was, quite literally, Comfort Food, a new novel by Kate Jacobs, author of The Friday Night Knitting Club  (a book I enjoyed immensely last year even though I don’t know a thing about knitting!)  Imagine my excitement when I received an ARC of Comfort Food which centers around cooking, an activity in which I have more than a perfunctory interest.

I must admit, for comfort reading there’s nothing I love more than a big sprawling story about a strong female character, her friends, family, and life in general.  The Friday Night Knitting Club had every one of those qualities, and the writing was taut, with strong, well developed characters and believable situations.

Comfort Food  is created from this same recipe, and features Gus Simpson, hostess of a popular televsion cooking show, on the eve of her 50th birthday.  Gus is the quintessential mother hen, the woman who can fix anything with equal measures of aplomb- from her daughter’s love lives, to a fallen souffle.  But her approaching birthday has Gus rethinking her life, and a shake up at the network forces her to put her rejuvenation plans into high gear.  What emerges are some delicious changes for Gus as well as for her family and friends.

It was a good novel for a kind of worrisome weekend.  I’m not sure if the writing was quite up the standards of Ms. Jacobs’ first novel, and sometimes I felt the characters and situations were a bit contrived. But is was a good read - a comforting kind of book.  And worries always appear a bit brighter in the light of day, don’t they?

Hmm, I’ve just noticed Ms. Jacobs is appearing at my neighborhood Borders on May 14 -maybe I’ll stop by and say hello (smiles).

Meanwhile, it’s time for another cup of coffee, and a perusal of bookstack to see what’s next.

Perhaps Run, by Ann Patchett.  Or Wings of Fire, by Charles Todd. 

What do you think?