Book Review: The Settlers

This is a longer than usual book review. It is also unusual for its content. This review is more about the relevance of the story for what we need to know about our own ancestors than it is about the story itself. Let me explain: Forty-five years ago, two elderly women in the church whereContinue reading “Book Review: The Settlers”

Book Review: Wild Ginger

Anchee Min’s Wild Ginger relates a love story in the midst of turmoil told from the point of view of a teenage girl, Maple, who suffers at the hands of a bully, Hot Pepper, because Maple’s father was in a forced labor camp at the beginning of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She meets the title character, WildContinue reading “Book Review: Wild Ginger”

Book Review: The Orchid House

Lucinda Riley’s New York Times 2012 best seller, The Orchid House, spans seven decades and two continents, and addresses the lives of three generations of landowners and their employees and their descendants in Norfolk, England. The three generations of the Crawford family, owners of Wharton Park, are on the verge of losing the estate throughoutContinue reading “Book Review: The Orchid House”