Mary E. Trimble

Looking for Jazz: A Memoir about the Black College and Southern Town That Changed My Life by Anna R. Hathaway is written by a white woman from the mid-west who accepts a teaching job at a black college in a small Georgia town. The book covers the turbulent, changing times, especially in the South, of 1968–1972.

Anna Mitchell, 23, with a Masters in English from the University of Wisconsin, accepts the position of instructor in the English department at Fort Valley State College in Georgia. Meanwhile, her husband begins advanced training 100 miles away at Fort Benning, and would soon join the elite Special Forces as a Green Beret, eventually serving in Vietnam.

During the first four years of Anna’s career, she saw many social changes: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, The National Organization for Women (NOW) protested for women’s rights, the Supreme Court mandated public school desegregation, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) held a sit-in at Harvard, and a man landed on the moon. Meanwhile, the Vietnam “Conflict” raged on.

Anna was well received, although not all her classes were of particular interest to the students. She found the students and staff respectful, but at times she observed black and white communities segregated in restaurants, stores, hotels, and many churches. Even doctor’s offices had waiting rooms designated by signs reading “White Side” and “Colored Side.” Anna found striking differences between midwestern humor and southern humor, and especially black humor. She took it all in and strove to adjust to the various situations.

I enjoyed reading about Anna’s observations and personal twists on life as a white professor and wife in the South. Some of her experiences were unpleasant, some joyous, and through it all, I admired her open-mindedness and determination to make a difference. But did she find jazz? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

Book Review: Romeo and Emilia

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Mary

Romeo and Emilia: How one brave girl rose up from a wheelchair onto the back of a horse by Roni McFadden is a unique true story that will warm the hearts of all who read it.

The introduction, written by Roni McFadden, tells how the story came about. The author and Emilia Maureen Pauling, eleven, were new neighbors in Willits, California. When McFadden met Emilia the little girl told her she loved horses, that one of her favorite things to do was to play horse video games. Well, this was her lucky day! McFadden owns a horse that lived just down the road. Emilia was beside herself with joy when told she would actually meet and ride Romeo, a Leopard Appaloosa.

Emilia was born with a genetic abnormality, bilaeral microphthalmia (small eyes) and is legally blind. She also has hyper- and hypotonia in her legs. When Emilia was four she started walking with a walker, but now wearing leg braces, can walk and run, using a wheelchair only for long distances.

This charming children’s book tells the story of Emilia and Romeo’s adventures. Romeo, snow white with black spots, gave Emilia a gentle ride. At first the little girl was nervous, but soon learned the horse’s rhythm and was able to just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

Romeo and Emilia carries a valuable message to both children and adults. Many children, especially girls, have a deep love of horses, a relationship both physical and emotional. When a child has special needs, the experience is even more valuable. The book is beautifully illustrated with photographs of Emilia’s experience with Romeo. I recommend this book for all children, and especially for adults to read to or with children.

Book Review: The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

Posted on January 29, 2024 by Mary

The Next Person You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom, is a worthy sequel to his bestseller, The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

Annie, eight, lost her left hand in a horrific accident at the Ruby Pier amusement park. Although the hand was surgically reattached, she still bore the scars both physically and mentally. She doesn’t remember the tragic accident, nor does she remember Eddie, the amusement park mechanic who saved her life.

Life is a struggle for Annie. She has no self-confidence and finds it difficult to achieve acceptance. One person who befriends her stands out in her young life, Paulo, but he moves to Italy with his family. Later, as an adult, he returns, they reunite and marry. Annie finally finds true happiness. But their bliss is short lived when a hot-air balloon falls from the sky.

Annie is suddenly transported into her heavenly journey where she reunites with Eddie, the amusement park mechanic. With Eddie’s guidance, she learns how her life on earth affected others. We are reminded once again how endings are really beginnings, how our lives profoundly affect others, and that every life matters.

I enjoyed The Next Person You Meet in Heaven as much as its prequel. Albom writes with heart. None of us knows what heaven is like, but it’s easy to believe that the imaginative heaven that Albom creates is plausible.

Book Review: All the Little Hopes

Posted on January 22, 2024 by Mary

All the Little Hopes, a novel by Leah Weiss, is a coming-of-age story about two teenage girls who embark on solving the curious disappearance of three men. The novel takes place in North Carolina during the stressful World War II years.

Thirteen-year-old Lucy Brown is a precocious girl who, like her heroine Nancy Drew, loves to solve mysteries. Her father grows tobacco and raises bees for honey. Lucy’s is a close-knit, strongly Christian family.

Also thirteen, Allie Bert Tucker has a questionable past. After her mother dies in childbirth, Allie Bert’s father gives her a one-way bus ticket to stay with her aunt who is expecting a baby. After a long bus journey to the other side of the state, Allie Bert is not welcomed at her aunt’s, and is unceremoniously locked out of the house.

The two girls meet and form an immediate friendship, and Lucy’s parents welcome Allie Bert into their family. The two of them set out to solve some of the town’s most puzzling mysteries. Together, they help one another survive the awkward early-teen years.

All the Little Hopes is a remarkable story. World War II demanded sacrifice from everyone. Lucy’s older brother and brother-in-law are both fighting in Europe. Extra work is demanded of the family when the Army needs honey-bee wax to lubricate ammunition, tools, and cables. A Nazi prisoner-of-war camp is built nearby, which adds anxiety in the community.

I enjoyed watching these two girls develop. Teenage years are often riddled with confusion and feelings of inadequacy, and both Lucy and Allie Bert are no exception. The United States was very much affected by a war raging across the seas with combat both in Europe and the Pacific. The war demanded many sacrifices for the common good. Although the novel is fictional, it is peppered with historical facts, such as bees wax being used for the war effort. All the Little Hopes would be of interest to both teens and adults.

Book Review: The Covenant of Water

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Mary

The Covenant of Water, a novel by Abraham Verghese, is a fascinating story that takes place mostly in Southern India, 1900 to 1977.

Mariamma is only twelve when wed to Appachen, a forty-three-year-old widower. Even though marriage arrangements and its strict stipulations seem strange to the western world, that was the custom in India. In those days, the intended bride and groom normally didn’t even talk to one another beforehand. Her mother claims “The saddest day of a girl’s life is the day of her wedding.” When she arrives in Parambil, land of her husband’s 500 acres, Mariamma is frightened and terribly homesick. However, her husband is a compassionate man who understands his young wife’s fear and doesn’t approach her as a wife until she matures.

Mariamma becomes a loving companion to Appachen’s two-year old son, Jojo. Together Mariamma and Appachen have two more children, Baby Molay and Philipose. Jojo affectionately calls Mariamma Big Ammachi, meaning Big Mother; his father Big Appachen. Throughout her life, Mariamma will experience unimaginable changes, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss. Her faith, love, and strength sustain her family.

Some families have an affliction called “The Condition,” an aversion to bodies of water. Sometimes victims experience dizziness, headaches, and facial weakness. In Appachen’s family, almost every generation will experience a drowning. In Kerala it’s an inconvenient condition because they are surrounded by water. Appachen will go miles out of his way to travel by land rather than take a much shorter route by boat. The Covenant of Water follows three generations of Appachen’s family who suffer from this affliction.

Reading The Covenant of Water was a commitment, but well worth the effort. The novel is an epic of love, faith, and medicine. It’s hardcover 736 pages involve three generations, two continents, and several geographic locations. Author Abraham Verghese, whose parents were born in India, speaks with authority about life and times in India, and as an American physician is knowledgeable about the medical issues presented in the novel. I recommend The Covenant of Water to anyone seeking to learn about India and another way of life, the consequences of love, and sacrifices made so others may live.

Book Review: The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Mary

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter: A Novel by Kim Edwards is a fascinating story of familial secrets and the healing power of love.

A Kentucky spring blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins. The first baby, a boy, is a normal, healthy baby, but the second child, a girl, has obvious traits of Down syndrome. The babies’ mother, Norah, is heavily sedated and unaware of the second baby’s condition. It was 1964 and not uncommon for babies born with Down’s to be sent to an institution. David makes a split decision, altering several lives forever. Convincing himself that he’s protecting his wife from heartache, he orders the attending nurse to take the baby to a nearby institution, swearing her to secrecy. He tells Norah that the infant died at birth.

The nurse, Caroline Gill, takes the infant to the institution as instructed, but at the last minute cannot leave the baby in that cold, uncaring place. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself.

Over the next quarter of a century, we follow the two families, the doctor, his wife and their healthy son, Paul, and the nurse Caroline with her “adopted” daughter, Phoebe. We feel Doctor David Henry’s guilt, Norah’s sense of “missing something,” their son’s inexplicable yearning. We watch Caroline as she loves and cares for Phoebe, guarding their precious secret.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is a well-crafted novel. The author does a realistic job of showing the guilt and anxiety resulting in this hastily-made life-altering decision, and the fierce love parents have for their children, both biological and adopted. I think the author does a good job of showing the mind-set of the time, and how attitudes have changed over the years. I enjoyed this uplifting novel of the healing power of redemptive love.

Book Review: The Bundling Year

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Mary

The Bundling Year: A Non-Traditional Contemporary Amish Romance by Anne Schroeder is book one of three in the series “Field of Promise.” The novel mostly takes place in present-day Ohio.

Amanda Miller, an Oregon college student, faces a life-changing dilemma: stay in college or take the challenge her favorite but recently deceased aunt has offered her. In order to comply with the offer, Amanda must leave school and take residence in her aunt’s Ohio house. But there’s a stipulation that she must live in the house a year before selling. Amanda’s father strenuously objects to her leaving, but her mother, although paralyzed from a car accident, urges her to take the challenge. With very few resources, she packs her few belongings and meager savings and drives to the picturesque Amish region of Ohio. Amanda finds her aunt’s house in dire need of repair, certainly before she can consider selling it.

Amanda views with interest her neighbors’ farm across the road. She notices by their dress that they are Amish, that they don’t drive cars or use tractors—they drive a horse- drawn buggy and plow their fields with draft horses.

Jacob Ruth lives with his strict Amish family across the road from Amanda. He has not yet been baptized, meaning as an adult he has not made a life-long commitment to God. Amish children go to school only for the first few grades, long enough to learn to read and write. So Jacob and his brothers and sisters know “English” ways, but the family is active in the Amish community, and Jacob is expected to be baptized and follow the traditions of his family.

When Amanda asks Jacob about hiring him to make repairs to her house, he eagerly agrees. As they become better acquainted, a mutual attraction turns into a serious bond that forms between them which quickly turns into desire. But can their two very different lifestyles bring lasting happiness?

The Bundling Year was an eye-opener for me. When I served with the Red Cross, I participated in the Kosovo refugee program at Fort Dix, New Jersey, near an Amish community. It seemed strange to me to have horse-drawn buggies mingled with regular traffic, and to see people dressed so differently. But I was busy with Red Cross business and never became acquainted with the Amish or their lifestyle. The Bundling Year gave me an opportunity to see a different way, to watch two worlds collide, and to understand the serious implications of merging two very different cultures. The author does an amazing job of capturing the language and mannerisms of the Amish, and portraying the stark differences between “modern culture” and Amish strict traditional ways. I recommend this excellent novel to teens and adults who would appreciate another viewpoint on life.

Book Review: The Solace of Open Spaces

Posted on December 26, 2023 by Mary

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are only consequences.”
Robert G. Ingersoll

The Solace of Open Spaces: Essays by Gretel Ehrilich is a rich collection of essays about life in Wyoming’s ranch country in the 1970s.

Author Gretel Ehrilich has captured the essence of living in a world filled with sheep, cattle, faithful dogs, Wyoming badlands, long winters and tough, weathered people. It’s a place where people were outnumbered by animals, where sagebrush covered 58,000 of the state’s 97,063 square miles.

The author came to Wyoming only for a visit, but then couldn’t convince herself to leave. She worked a variety of jobs, moving thousands of sheep into shearing sheds, helping round up cattle, sorting and branding, finally becoming a rancher herself.

The essays in this book are rich with descriptions of beauty, unbelievably harsh weather with never-ending wind, tough people who will always stop to help a friend, and who have rich kinship to the land. Wyoming cowboys claim that the road to success is not toughness but “toughing it out”—putting up with the discomforts of the weather and land; to just keep on keeping on. Here winters are so severe that it’s hard to know who suffers more—the livestock or the ranchers who feed and care for them. The hardships of winter are often expressed by “froze in,” “froze up,” or “froze out.”

The Solace of Open Spaces reads like a memoir rather than what I think of as essays. Gretel Ehrilich writes about the habits of cattle, sheep, dogs, wild animals, even insects. She explains the world of rodeo, not only as an observer, but the behind-the-scenes business of rodeos. She describes attending a Plains Indian Sundance, a serious ceremony that involves repetitive dancing and fasting to regenerate the power to restore health, vitality, and harmony to the land and tribes. This book is rich in detail, holding nothing back, both good and bad. I highly recommend The Solace of Open Spaces.

Book Review: Seven Perfect Things

Posted on December 18, 2023 by Mary

Seven Perfect Things, a heart-warming novel by Catherine Ryan Hyde, is another example of this author’s ability to stir the heart. This time it’s with seven puppies and a girl who becomes attached to them.

Thirteen year-old Abbie Hubble witnesses a man dumping a wriggling bag into a river near her home in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Out of curiosity, she dives into the river and rescues seven tiny puppies. Now what? She takes them to a local animal shelter who would take them, but unfortunately they are already beyond capacity and would have to euthanize the pups. There is no way Abbie can let that happen.

But Abbie has a big problem. She can’t take the pups to her unhappy home. She gets along well with her mother, but her father is a bully who makes their lives miserable. She remembers seeing what she believed was an abandoned cabin when hiking the hills. She carries the pups all the way up a steep hill to the cabin, only to find it had been broken into and trashed. Still, she could put the pups in a storage shed on the property. Now her life is consumed with how to care for these seven tiny lives.

Elliot Colvin is still reeling from the death of his beloved wife. She had been ill for a long time and has just recently passed away. Elliot, grieving, is at odds with himself, has not yet returned to work, hasn’t found his footing, can’t even imagine how he’ll make it from day to day. Maybe he’d go to his cabin where he used to stay when hunting, get a change of scenery. With his wife’s lingering death, he hadn’t been there for a long time. When he arrives he’s angered by seeing the place trashed and many of his household items stolen. But wait, what is that noise coming from the shed?

Abbie finally has to tell her mother about the pups. She needs money to buy food for them. But they both know better than to tell her father. He not only wouldn’t understand, he wouldn’t allow her to keep them.

When Abbie and Elliot meet, what at first is an awkward encounter develops into a friendship of trust and respect. Abbie knows happiness when she’s with Elliot and wants her mother to both meet Elliot and see her seven pups. The consequences of this meeting has far-reaching affects on the lives of all concerned, including the pups.

Seven Perfect Things is an entertaining, wholesome read with a message. Catherine Ryan Hyde has done it again with this heart-warming story

Book Review: The Carnelian Game

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Mary

The Carnelian Game by Mary Ann Hayes is a fun novel packed with adventure and wonder.

Jake is visiting his grandparents’ beach house for the first time in years. He’s twenty-three now and has fond memories of summers at the beach house. Something, some remote memory, nags at him, but he can’t quite recall what it is.

Desmond (Des), seven, Jake’s little cousin, is also at the beach house with his parents. Des and Jake share the same bedroom and both begin to hear strange noises, a sort of pounding sound. However, they never mention this strangeness to each other, each thinking it is his own imagination. After a few days, Jake must leave to return to work.

Des discovers an old, dusty carpet under the bed where Jake slept. Behold! It’s a magic carpet that actually has a name: Mariah. Des and Mariah are soon launched on exciting, and sometimes scary, adventures.

Before Desmond and his magic carpet Mariah can play the next game, they must first finish an earlier game which ended when Desmond’s cousin, Jake, turned ten and could no longer participate. Des learns the rules from the “captain of the games” with the other carpets and riders. Their goal is to find a hidden treasure chest and the scroll it contains. But not only do they not know where in the world the treasure chest is, they need a special key to open it. Of course, the other magic carpets have the same goals, but unfortunately some of the game participants don’t play fair.

Once that game is finished, they move on to the 417th Global Magic Carpet Game. This game takes Des and Mariah to Egypt in search of a carnelian agate, a gem rich in color that symbolizes energy. It seems the precious gem was stolen from a sphinx, leaving a village destitute.

Highly imaginative, The Carnelian Game is rich with detail of the areas where the games take them, whether it’s South Africa or Egypt. The author’s research is highly impressive which makes the book not only a delightful read, but educational as well. This would be a fun book for kids of all ages, or for an adult to read to a younger child.