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An Amish Love: Three Novellas and Something Unexpected Review/Giveaway

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Drug addictions, forced marriages, deadly accidents, a fall out with the church and spouses who disappear mysteriously. An Amish Love contains three lovely novellas, set in Amish country-side, with a big dash of the unexpected. The novellas are all tied to place and characters flit in and out of each separate story. The prominent themes are: alienation and love. This is a perfect book for my February I Heart Books Event. An Amish Love is a triple threat. Usually in acollection like this, there is at least one weak link. But all of these stories are really well done and enjoyable. Each is a treat on its own.

Take for instance the first novella: A Marriage of the Heart by Kelly Long. Joseph Lambert has been away from his Amish ways for several years and has come back to live with a local doctor. Abigail Kauffman, motherless, lonely and a beautiful flirt, sees a way out of her ‘boring’ Amish life that she no longer wants to be part of and she tricks him into marriage. Well, as the plot progresses in this really charming story, she comes to love her husband and slowly reveals to her father that she has always felt lonely and unloved and was deceitful in claiming Joseph made advances towards her before their marriage. Joseph carries his own secrets. When an ex-girlfriend shows up with a vial full of painkillers and an old hold on his heart, the relationship is tested. 
In the second novella, What the Heart Sees, written by Kathleen Fuller, Ellie Chupp, who lost her sight in an accident, finds her jam business growing and her idenpendence tested with overprotective parents. Her friend is about to marry the young Amish man who is known to have been responsible for a deadly car accident. Ellie’s good friend is dead as a result and Ellie’s fiancee broke up with her, unable to handle her blindness. When Christopher Miller returns to town after being shunned, Ellie finds herself feeling romance again. But how could this individual love her, now that she is blind? And will Miller be able to forgive and return to the Amish life in time for his sister’s wedding?
And finally in Healing Hearts by Beth Wiseman, the father of a large brood returns home to his wife after being absent one year without explanation. While Naaman Lapp was not shunned, his family remains perplexed as to why he left. His son Adam is particularly angry and finds it difficult to forgive despite the Amish teachings. Naaman’s wife, Levina, has moved on and found a degree of independence despite the chatty gossip in town and the speculation that Naaman might have had another woman in Ohio. Eventually he will realize he needs to court his wife again and earn her trust back.

The end of this book contains a reader’s guide and some excellent Amish recipes from within the novellas. I cannot wait to try some out here. Yum!                 
 Am Amish Love, by Beth Wiseman, Kathleen Fuller and Kelly Long is a Thomas Nelson book. $14.99 US, 391 pages and is classified Fiction, Christian, Romance.
All books are provided free from the publisher but that in no way affects my review.
For this giveaway also Feb. 27th.
1. Follow me on GFC.
2. Follow @inkscrblr on twitter
and leave me your contact information so I can reach you if you win.
Extra two entries if you tweet this contest. “Amish Love book giveaway – not what you expected – enter on http://www.thriftymommasbrainfood.com/ ”

Barrio Bushido: The Next Trainspotting? Review and a Giveaway

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Barrio Bushido is disturbing and violent and poetic and a profound social statement. Barrio Bushido is Ben Bac Sierra’s first novel and, as graphic and absolutely horrific as it was at times I couldn’t stop reading or envisioning this as a really great movie script in the same vein as Trainspotting or Fight Club. Barrio is the gritty realistic sad tale of three gang members, growing up in a Latin ghetto area of California. The main character is Lobo, the wolf, leader of the pack. He is a strange disenfranchised soul with the heart of a poet. He spends his days in a drugged haze knowing he is inevitably headed towards a fate that involves self destruction. The bull, Toro, is babysat by a television when his mother goes to work cleaning office buildings and homes. While his sister can come along on the jobs, he cannot because he is too rough and so on one of these occasions when he is left home, as a five-year-old, he falls out the window of his apartment building. He waits and wanders after the fall searching for help that doesn’t come. As a youth he will find a place in the marines where he tries to earn respect and the love of his mother. He endures the Gulf War and is little more than a young adult when he learns to wear the scars of his many battles with pride. Santiago is the third pillar of the odd triad of brothers. He pulls the drooping needles from his parent’s arms and feeds his brothers and sisters. Benjamin Bac Sierra is an intense writer. He manages to create empathy for characters that are completely vile outlaws. Bac Sierra knows his topic well. He is a former homeboy himself and a veteran of the Gulf War. The author himself, a former homeboy and a veteran of the Gulf War, clearly knows his topic well. He grew up in San Francisco’s Mission, joined the Marine Corps at 17 and saw front line combat in the Gulf War. In an incredible transformation he managed to complete a Bachelor of Arts at U.C. Berkeley after an honourable discharge from the marines and is now a professor at City College in San Francisco. Bac Sierra’s characters are nothing if not realistic. They jump off the page fighting. Bac Sierra is a masterful storyteller with a true strenth for characterization. Lobo is no cliche; instead he is a gangster with a weakness for his girlfriend Sheila and a strangely romantic soul. He is placed in an impossible situation when a rival gang member, he is supposed to kill ends up kidnapping Sheila to turn the tables on Lobo. Lobo is a strange contradiction, speaking in swear words and poetry at the same time. These characters are remarkable and magnetic. The story is gritty and compelling in the same way some traffic accidents are. But this story isn’t for everyone. It is a fiction story with a high degree of realism and extreme violence. This is a brave first novel rooted in some reality. It will be very interesting to see where the author goes next, also if someone options this as a script.

Barrio Bushido, by Benjamin Bac Sierra, El Leon Literary Arts, $20.00 US., 282 pages. Fiction.
Thriftymommas rating $$$ out of $$$$$. Excellent characterization and dramatic plot, but too much hostile language towards women and the violence, while understandable in this context is really over the top.)

I am giving a copy of Barrio Bushido away this month as part of my I Heart Books Event.
Mandatory:
1. Follow me on GFC (google friend connect.)
2. Leave your contact information so I can reach you if you win.
I will draw for this one on Feb. 27th. Open to Canada and US.

Reviewed by Paula Schuck

A Book BlogHop and a $25 Chapters Giveaway – Canada

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Book Blogger Hop

I have a new bloghop today just for book bloggers and it looked like fun so I am passing it on. Those of you who read me often know this month is my February I Heart Books Event and I am giving away a lot of great goodies. Today I am also giving away a $25 Chapters/Indigo gift code.

Mandatory (To Win:) Canada Only
1. Follow me – thriftymommasbrainfood -on GFC at side of blog.
2. Follow me – thriftymommastips – on GFC side of that blog here http://www.thriftymommastips.blogspot.com/
3. Tell me what you might buy with it and leave me your email address.

That’s it!
1. Extra two entries for following me on twitter @inkscrblr
2. Extra two entries for tweeting this or something like it: “Canadians can win a $25 gift card to Chapters/Indigo from http://www.thriftymommasbrainfood.blogspot.com/”

I will draw for this one on Feb. 22. Happy Valentine’s Day!

The Lake of Dreams: Kim Edwards

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Fans of the mega-best-selling The Memory Keeper’s Daughter will be thrilled to know that Kim Edwards has a new novel out this week. The Lake of Dreams is a worthy second novel from an author that is quite skilled at spinning a good yarn. The Lake of Dreams is a lovely story, a tale I initially thought had little in common with the first novel, which was the story of a doctor who helps birth his own twins, one of whom is born with Down’s Syndrome. In The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, the doctor with a perfect life, gives his child with special needs up to a nurse he works with, tells his wife the one twin died and never really expects to be bothered by the whole affair again. But, as I began to write this review I realized the many similarities between the novels. The Lake of Dreams is also a book centring on themes of secrecy, betrayal, grief and family relationships. The Lake of Dreams begins in the past, a scene in which the main character rebuffs her father, shrugging off a fishing trip as a rebellious teen, only to wake in the middle of the night to the news that he has drowned. Grief propels Lucy though life and her many thwarted careers and relationships. As an adult, Lucy lives in Japan, temporarily between jobs, living with her lover Yoshi, until news that her mother has had an accident forces her back home again for a visit. Transported to the sprawling home of her childhood on The Lake of Dreams, Lucy will question her place in her family and confront her grief as she grapples with the idea that her mother may be ready to sell their home. But, as she does this, she stumbles upon a secret, a package of odd items, and letters hidden in a window seat within the home and sealed up for many decades. The discovery leads her to a distant relative, a woman named Rose whose story unravels bit by bit to intertwine with that of Lucy’s own family. Edwards is very talented at crafting beginnings that grab you by the throat and haul you into the first chapters of her books. Less talented at maintaining that momentum, I think. Perhaps, not surprising as her books centre on the inner workings of character’s minds and the complicated relationships we have with other human beings, especially those who are related to us. There are glimpses of brilliant imagery here, with the stained windows used as a unique metaphor, that would on the surface seem obvious as a reference to a window to the past. But there is a lot more here, contained within the puzzle of the windows themselves. On finding the tackle box that went missing after her father’s death, Lucy describes the many fishing lures they made: “They were like gemstones, smooth and spherical, and trailing feathers, streamers, bits of lace.” I enjoyed this book very much, and could even see genius at work in the crafting of the chapters and the story, but in some ways it was more appealing to me academically than emotionally. Edwards is an associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky. She has also written one collection of short stories: The Secrets of a Fire King.

The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards, fiction, Viking, Jan. 4, 2011, $26.95 US Hardcover and $33.50 Canada, 378 pages.
Thriftymommastips rating is $$$$ out of $$$$$. A nice read, with moments of brilliance, but falls slightly short of superstar status, perhaps because it lacks emotion on some levels.

For more information, or to buy see amazon link on side bar or  visit http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670022175,00.html?THE_LAKE_OF_DREAMS_Kim_Edwards

The Rhythm of Secrets: Litfuse Blog Tour and a giveaway

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The Rhythm of Secrets is a roller coaster of a book with multiple serpentine plot twists that sneak up on you. This is the fictional story of Sheila, a promising young musician, born in New Orleans and named Sheba originally. The story jumps around in time from present day making use of a framing device. Sheila is a pastor’s wife telling the story of her life to a young man named Samuel. In the past sequences, she is a child, at first leading an interesting, Bohemian and colourful life, running bets for her gambler father. But a fire changes all of that and suddenly she is orphaned, taken in by her cold, rich, grandmother, Mimi. The grandmother immediately forces Sheba to have her name legally changed to Sheila, on the basis that the name Sheba is not upper class enough. As if it weren’t bad enough that Sheba lost her parents in tragedy, she will endure many humiliations and injustices, first at the hands of her grandmother and then later at the hands of others: doctors and medical personnel. The one good thing to come from her stay in grandma’s home is a loving servant who cares for her named Camille and an upper class education at the finest schools. At school Sheila/Sheba finds solace and passion through music. Just as she begins to find her home, carving a way in the world, she takes a holiday visit to see her cousin and meets a soldier, a young boy, who wins her over at least temporarily. Although Sheila is a musical genius, she is utterly ignorant in many life skills and neither sex, nor reproduction, have been explained to her. A brief time after meeting the young man, she begins feeling faint and sick to her stomach and her loving servant Camille explains that she is pregnant. Now young and unwed, never to see the biological father of her baby again, she is cast out by her grandmother and comes to live in a home for unwed mothers where she will be hidden from society. This portion of the story centres on an adoption arc that is remarkably and devastatingly accurate for the time period. Despite the reality of wanting to keep her son, Sheila, whose name will be changed to Sylvia when she must be hidden away, is steered down a path towards an assumed adoption. At the home for unwed mothers she will find friends, with stories every bit as heartbreaking as hers. But she cannot stay long after she gives birth and must find her way again, on her own. I had no idea this book had such a strong adoption theme in it when I agreed to review it. Somehow adoption books find me. I never tire of these stories especially  when they sneak up out of the blue and surprise me, as this one did. Sylvia’s plight is sad and tragic, the story of a birthmother from a time when abortion was not available or heard of, and it lends an interesting historical light on the topic. Slowly the author reveals that Samuel, the listener, is the son once removed from her and placed with an adoptive family. This is truly Sheila’s story and the point of view is the unwed teen mother. It is much less a story of adoptee, or adoptive family. And that’s okay. The Rhythm of Secrets starts with a loud cacophony and seems to slow down to a whisper for a bit before it picks up speed and tempo, rolling towards the eventual end. This is a good story. The main character is very compelling and for the most part this is a fresh idea. Patti Lacy has written two other books, An Irishwoman’s Tale and What the Bayou Saw.

Thriftymommastips rating is $$$ 1/2 out of $$$$$.
The Rhythm of Secrets, by Patti Lacy, Kregel Publications, 2010, 336 pages with book group discussion questions . Paperback.
 I received a copy of the book to do this review, but my opinions are all my own.
I am giving my copy of this book to one lucky reader as part of my Valentine’s I Heart Books giveaway.
To enter: (Open to Canada only)
1. Follow me on twitter @inkscrblr.
I will draw for this one on Valentine’s Day. Don’t forget to leave me your contact email in case you win.

Bite Me: Not Your Granny’s Betty Crocker Cookbook Review and Giveaway

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My copy of Bite Me. Keep Your Hands Off. It’s Mine, All Mine
This is not your Grandma’s or your Mama’s Betty Crocker Cookbook. It is so much more. Need proof?
1. The title: Bite Me: A Stomach Satisfying, Visually Gratifying, Fresh-Mouthed Cookbook.
2. The hysterical drawings:
Like this one which tells a little about the sisters that created the book, Julie Albert and Lisa Gnat. One brings the funny and the other brings the palate. (No that’s not them in the picture)



And this one. Which prefaces the appetizers section of the book.

3. And the incredible recipes. (From traditional with a twist – Rustic Meatballs in Marinara Sauce to oddball unique – like Julie’s Tabbouleh – (I made the meatballs on our snow day here last Wednesday and I’ve got to say they are the yummiest meatballs I’ve ever made. My whole family agreed)
4. I am no foodie, but I can make these recipes. They are easy to follow and delicious. They make me laugh and they make me feel competent in the kitchen (which can be a stretch some days)
5. Smart tips that I tested and tried here. Luckily I had some very hard brown sugar rehabilitated thanks to the sister’s tip about bread.
 

 Tonight I made my fourth recipe from this amazing new cookbook and I am in culinary love with this extremely funny and irreverrent collection. The style of this cookbook reminded me a wee bit of that runaway success Looney Spoons by the sisters from Ontario that created a mini empire based on their funny cookbook and savvy sense of style that caught the eye of finance guru David Chilton. Bite Me is a funnier cookbook that makes you chuckle while tossing ingredients together. Frankly anything that helps me view cooking as less of a chore is a great investment for my whole family. The white chocolate chunk cookies in Bite Me, were the two sisters’ signature item, Chunky White Chocolate and Cranberry. Easy to bake and delicious. There’s nothing my kids and I love to make more than scrumptious cookies. The Balsamic chicken with sweet peppers will be a new staple in my regular rotation of dishes. This one will be a great gift book for pretty much any occasion.
Bite Me is by Julie Albert and Lisa Gnat, 2009, Pinky Swear Press Inc. Canada, $29.95, 272 pages can be purchased at http://www.bitemecookbook.com/
or http://www.pinkyswearpress.com/ and this one gets a $$$$$ out of $$$$$.
I was provided with a copy of this cookbook for free to review. The opinions on this blog are all my own. Bite Me!
My copy of Bite Me is mine I am not sharing. But the lovely authors will.
TO WIN: You can win a signed copy of Bite Me, a reusable Bite Me shopping bag and a Bite Me hat (you can enter until Feb. 15th)

1. Follow thriftymommasbrainfood on Google Friend Connect (it’s right there on the side of my blog) or tell me that you already do.
2. Follow @inkscrblr on twitter, or tell me that you already do.
3. Visit one of the sites above either http://www.bitemecookbook.com/ or http://www.pinkyswearpress.com/
and tell me something you learned from either site.

Extra entry (Not mandatory at all, but gives you more chances to win)
1. (1 extra entry) Follow one of my other blogs: http://www.thriftymommastips.blogspot.com/
or http://www.thriftymommagogo.blogspot.com/
2. (I extra entry for each tweet. Comment each time.)Tweet this or something like it:  “I just entered to win a copy of Bite Me cookbook with http://www.thriftymommasbrainfood.com/ ”
3. Blog about the giveaway once and earn 5 extra entries. Leave me the link.
I will draw for the winner with random.org and announce the winner Feb. 16th at 9 a.m. Please remember to leave your email address.

The Search: Blog Tour

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The Search is a quiet little charmer of a book. A romantic story set in Amish country, The Search is part three in the Lancaster County Secrets series of women’s Christian romance novels. This story centres around two young women, one named Bess and the other Lainey O’Toole. At first it is unclear what the two women might have in common and how their stories are intertwined. Bess is the grandaughter of Bertha Riehl, and she is sent for the summer to Pennsylvania to help care for her grandmother after some surgery has left Bertha in need. Well, the surgery turns out to have been a bit of a stretch and the grandmother, a bit of a scheming puppet-master. Bertha is a comical character who Bess learns to love over the course of the summer. Bess and Bertha and the farmhand Billy will all work together throughout the summer at Rose Hill farm, living off the land and learning how to grow roses. The roses, of course, are a metaphor for the characters within the book, some blooming like Bess, others slowly withering like Simon and Bertha and, yet another group still twinning together like the hybrids Billy has learned to graft into new variations on the traditional flower. Throughout the summer Bertha mischieviously tells Bess she must teach her how to drive a car and repeatedly “borrows” a police car to give her lessons. When Bertha manages to get herself and Bess thrown into jail, her son Jonah must return home. Thus Bertha successfully orchestrates the return of her son Jonah, Bess’s father. Lainey O’Toole has remained in Stoney Ridge following some car troubles. She is an aspiring chef who once lived in Stoney Ridge and didn’t intend to return, but winds up spending far more time there than intended. While she is there revisiting her old home, she is confronted by her past and the choices made so long ago, on a night when Jonah and his young family were involved in a horse and buggy accident just outside Lainey’s old childhood home. When Bertha Riehl’s brother, the drunk Simon, who has been shunned by the Amish community for many years, is near death, Bertha seeks a family member to donate bone marrow. Finding a match for the old miserable Simon starts a whole subplot that will call DNA and lineage into question. When Bess is eventually found to be a perfect match, everybody but Jonah, it seems, understands what that must mean. This is a story well told. Suzanne Woods Fisher has successfully created several strong female characters that really are the heart of this book. The author shows restraint and purpose in capturing the reality of Amish life. Suzanne Woods Fisher is the author of The Choice and The Waiting. I have not read either one of the earlier stories, so I know that this novel can stand on its own, or in the context of the series. Based on how much I enjoyed this story, I would happily choose either of those other books. Getting to know the characters in The Search was enjoyable. The characters are engaging and well rounded and driven by psychological struggles and romantic desires. I found this book to be a nice surprise and truly enjoyed the strong female characters.
The Search by Suzanne Woods Fisher, Jan. 2001, Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, US $14.99, 297 pages with discussion guide.

Thriftymommastips rating is $$$$ out of $$$$$.
I received a copy of this book in order to review it. The opinions in this blog are my own.

Little Princes: When Passion Meets Talent and Equals Change

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When I received Little Princes in the mail for review I made a snap judgement call that this was about to be a story of an American who adopted some children internationally. Turns out, I proved the old adage you can’t judge a book by its cover. Little Princes by Conor Grennan combines passion, talent and a desire to change the world. On a quest to journey the world and fill a gap year of sorts, Grennan chooses in 2006 to travel to Nepal and work in an orphanage named Little Princes. He is young and single. He is also not prepared for what meets him there. Grennan is plunged right into a civil war zone. Despite little experience with children, Grennan is quickly enamoured by the tiny orphans. Nevertheless he does his three months there and leaves to travel the Globe. In Thailand, while visiting a friend, he feels the need to return. This book is a lovely and inspiring memoir about Grennan’s passion. It is sparked when he first sets foot in the orphanage and it continues to grow after he leaves, causing him to return again. He stays to learn more about Nepalese culture and as he learns more of the nature of poverty, he also discovers that the orphans in his charge, are, in nearly all of the cases victims of child traffickers. Despite horrific violence and danger posed by Maoist rebels, Grennan risks his life to find their families and return them home. This is the story of a man who refused to look away when he realized death certificates had been forged and that government corruption was rampant in Nepal. It is a passionate story and a moving memoir. Over the years that he worked at Little Princes, Grennan, visited family in the United States. In 2006 on one of the visits home, he set up a foundation to protect the Nepalese children. Next Generation Nepal is still active in the country and has a web site for more information. In light of the discoveries made here in this book, others should more thoroughly investigate other areas of the world where child trafficking may very well be just as rampant.

Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal, Conor Grennan
ISBN 9780061930058, publication date Feb. 1, 2011, William Morrow publishers, $25.99, 304 pages with colour photo insert and Index.
Thriftymommasbrainfood rating $$$$$ out of $$$$$
I received a copy of this book to review. The opinions in this blog are all my own.

The Poison Tree: A Sweet, Surprising and Sophisticated Thriller

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The Poison Tree is as decadent as your finest chocolate, a truly delicious hold-all-my-calls kind of book. It has all of the elements of a bestseller and, at times reminded me a bit of a drug trip. This read was truly addictive and when it was over I was truly craving more. The Poison Tree, by first time author Erin Kelly, arrived accompanying the latest novel of a more established author and I wasn’t even planning to give this a read for months because it wasn’t requested by me and my list of titles to review is massive. But from the second I picked this one up I was gone. The Poison Tree begins as Karen Clarke and daughter Alice,9, have just picked up Rex Capel from prison. He has been there serving a sentence for murder. Now he is to be reintegrated into his former life, or what is left of that life. We know Rex is Alice’s father, but we don’t know why he was in prison exactly. The narrator Karen, preoccupied and somewhat paranoid, lets drop a single name BIBA on the car ride back to their new life together and that sets the stage for the slow unravelling of the story of Rex, Biba and Karen. Rex and Biba are brother and sister, orphans they claim, inaccurately. Karen, a gifted language student, is going through the motions of completing her ascent into academia saddled with a dull boyfriend named Simon. When he breaks up with her she finds herself numb to the loss and open to the idea of possibility. Right on the cusp of one memorable summer, Karen encounters Biba, a young actress seeking a dialect coach. Biba is a force of nature, flamboyant, exotic and charmingly magnetic. But the very energy that fuels her desirability also threatens to consume her and anyone who gets close to her. Kelly’s first novel could have easily slipped into softcore porn territory, but it falls just shy of treading there, showing remarkable restraint on the part of the author. This is the story of one self indulgent summer that changes the course of all their lives. There are many surprises here in this taut thriller that is extremely well written for a first novel. I hesitate to spoil any of them for my readers. Erin Kelly is a former freelance journalist from North London. Her prose can be quite lovely; for instance: “That night in bed I lay awake on my right-hand side. Bruises, like sunburn are nocturnal and the one on my left thigh was waking up as I tried to sleep, a soft dark badge to commemorate the day’s chases and revelations.” Strangely, this is a novel that works very well alternating back and forth between past and present. The author does so in a logical fashion, as her narrator moves in and out memory, often triggered by a word. Kelly doesn’t superimpose a new chapter or alternate voices to cue the reader to her intent. Although there are a few jarring transitions, for the most part, this style creates a hazy almost drugged feel to the book, echoing the experience of that summer. The past blurs with the present and the effect is almost seamless, organic. Tiny clues are dropped throughout the book about the crimes that took place and the ensuing scandal. But in the end I didn’t find the outcome to be predictable at all. In fact, as I slowly guessed one plot twist another would blindside me. If I had to pick a single fault in this amazing read it would be the prologue which sets the tone, but also isn’t really necessary to the plot. The title of the novel is taken from William Blake’s poem “A Poison Tree.” The Poison Tree is a stunning debut.
The Poison Tree, by Erin Kelly, Paula Dorman Books Viking, Jan. 10, 2011, 322 pages, $26.50 US and $33.50 Canadian. Thriftymommastips rates this one $$$$ out of $$$$$. I received a free copy of the book in order to complete this review.

Tales From the Treehouse: Jane and The Raven King

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Jane and The Raven King is by Stephen Chambers, Sourcebooks, Jabberwocky, published last month Dec. 2010, $6.99 US and $8.99 Canadian, paperback, 256 pages.

My full written review is at New York Journal of Books.

This one gets five $$$$$ out of $$$$$. We thoroughly loved this character and her quest to save the world. Great strong plot and compelling adventure fantasy fiction for ages nine to 12.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.