As a bibliophile, I appreciate any book about books, or librarians. The setting is the Kentucky coal mining region, at the end of the Depression. The son of the owner of the local mine has married Alice, an English lass, and brought her back to small town Kentucky to live. When the opportunity arises to Read More
Author: Julie Crain Miguel
The Pioneers, by James Fenimore Cooper
This is part of the “Leatherstocking” series of books written by Cooper, and although it was published first, in 1823, it would actually be fourth of five, if you look at the series in chronological order. The other titles in the series include The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, and The Prairie. Read More
Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, by Jennifer Chiaverini, and Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, by Lynda Jones
Yes, there are two books with the same title. While they cover much of the same information, they do so in very different ways. If you are interested in this time frame, I would recommend both. The book by Lynda Jones is published by the National Geographic Society, and restricts itself more to the bare Read More
Call Your Daughter Home, by Deb Spera
This book is set in a small town in South Carolina in 1924. It traces three women, of differing races and classes. The author does an excellent job of telling each woman’s story, in her own voice. While the women know each other, and occasionally help one another, they would not consider themselves to be Read More
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
This is probably a very familiar book for many people. If you haven’t read the book, you may have seen one of the movies. If you had an ancestor who lived along the Mississippi, or the Ohio, or maybe even the Missouri river, or was a child in the 1850’s, which is when this was Read More
The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan
You might think a book about the people who lived through the 1930’s in the Dust Bowl would be rather, well, dry (sorry, couldn’t help myself), but Timothy Egan manages to bring the era to life. He tells the story not just through research at local museums and contemporary newspaper articles, but through interviewing people Read More
Finding Dorothy, by Elizabeth Letts
As you might guess, this is a book about a book, The Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum. Actually, it is about the wife of L Frank Baum, a woman by the name of Maud Gage Baum, who had a rather eventful life. While this is a book of historical fiction, the author did Read More
Johnny Tremain, by Esther Hoskins Forbes
This is another book intended for young people that I missed growing up. And it was definitely around way back then – a 75th anniversary edition of this Newbery Award winner has been recently published. The fact that it was intended for a younger demographic makes it a quick and easy read. While it is Read More
The Ghost of Gold Mountain, by Gordon H Chang
This book is about the unnamed Chinese immigrants who helped build the western part of the Transcontinental Railroad. While their achievements were praised at the time, their names and histories have been, for the most part, lost to time. Chang’s book is an attempt to recover some of that history. In the mid-1800’s, the Central Read More