TURN THE PAGE

TURN THE PAGE

Book and Author Reviews

By Nancy Ryan

There’s only one positive thing to say about the mid-winter cold, snow, and ice. And that is a warm, cozy house to be ensconced in with a good book and a cup of hot tea or chocolate!

I discovered another new author for me (much to my delight). The author is Katherine Center and the book is Things You Save In a Fire. Our heroine, Cassie, is an Austin, Texas, firefighter, and a darn good one at that. Because she says so! She has mostly been brought up by her dad after her mom left them on her 16th birthday. At 26, she has adjusted to the hurt and resentment, but not really. When her estranged mom calls from Boston with a request for assistance for a year citing health reasons, she is ready to refuse. But then circumstances at her fire station change, and she finds herself reconsidering her mom’s request. I read this book in one day, when the weather was so bad and the schools were closed.

Following up on another of this author’s books, I read Hello Stranger. Sadie, the heroine in this one, has a different kind of problem altogether. It is something that I’d never heard of called “prosopagnosia,” or face blindness. Sadie is a portrait artist by profession and has been given the opportunity to enter a national competition for her trade. As she prepares for this wondrous event, she is in a car accident, hits her head, and lands in the hospital with a leakage in her brain. This triggers the discovery of her hereditary ailment, face blindness. Of course, there is romance with angst, but her amazing condition took precedence for me, rather than the romantic story!

Apparently, there are two types of prosopagnosia, acquired and developmental. The acquired type happens with some sort of injury to the brain or a lesion. The developmental type is typically a condition that people have all of their lives. It is more commonly associated with memory than perception. One can generally see faces in the moment, but just have trouble remembering them later. One in fifty people have it, and don’t even know it. They assume it is how everyone sees! If you are interested in learning more about this condition, you can go to FaceBlind.org. Notable people with the disorder include Brad Pitt and Jane Goodell.

Fellow reader Kathleen also discovered a new author to her, Kristin Harmel. The book is When We Meet Again, and it begins during World War II through the present. Heroine Emily is alone. Her dad ran off when she was young, her mom died when she was 17, and her beloved grandma just passed away. When she is sent a beautiful painting of a young woman standing at the edge of a sugarcane field, she recognizes it as her grandmother. Emily begins to dig into the meaning of the picture, and the trail leads her from the Florida Everglades to Munich, Germany, and back to the Atlanta art scene. Along the way she discovers a new angle on her painful family history and her father’s disappearance. Harmel is also the author of several international best sellers, including The Sweetness of Forgetting and The Life Intended

What are you reading? Email me at nancyryan47@ gmail.com

See you at the library!