Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

 I missed Friday's post entirely. I noticed it late in the day, but didn't really feel like rushing something together even for a "photo Saturday" post. Instead, I'm skipping ahead, and getting a start on this week's posts. The thing is--I'm writing! Still, I have a review for today. Title: The Ice at the End of the World: An Epic Journey Into Greenland's Buried Past and Our Perilous Future Author: Jon Gertner; read by Fred Sanders Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2019. 13 hrs. Original hardback published 2019, Random House. 418 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher’s Blurb: Greenland: a remote, mysterious island five times the size of California but with a population of just 56,000. The ice sheet that covers it is 700 miles wide and 1,500 miles long, and is composed of nearly three quadrillion tons of ice. For the last 150 years, explorers and scientists have sought to understand Greenland--at first hoping that it would serve as

  Title: Raven's Witness: The Alaska Life of Richard K. Nelson Author: Hank Lentfer. Read by Basil Sands Publication Info: 2020 Tantor Audio. 8:29. Original 2020 by Mountaineers Books. 256 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher’s Blurb: Before his death in 2019, cultural anthropologist, author, and radio producer Richard K. Nelson's work focused primarily on the indigenous cultures of Alaska and, more generally, on the relationships between people and nature. Nelson lived for extended periods in Athabaskan and Alaskan Eskimo villages, experiences which inspired his earliest written works, including Hunters of the Northern Ice.     In Raven's Witness , Lentfer tells Nelson's story--from his midwestern childhood to his first experiences with Native culture in Alaska through his own lifelong passion for the land where he so belonged. Nelson was the author of the bestselling The Island Within and Heart and Blood . The recipient of multiple honorary

Title: The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West Author: David McCullough. Read by John Bedford Lloyd Publication Info: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2019. 10hrs 23 min. Source: Library digital resources   Publisher’s Blurb: As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory u

  Title: 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created Author: Charles C. Mann. Narrated by Roberston Dean Publication Info: Random House Audio 2011, 17:45 hours. Original Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, 557 pages. Source: Library Digital Editions Publisher’s Blurb: From the author of 1491— the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.  The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are

  Title: This Time Next Year We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir Author: Jacqueline Winspear. Read by the author. Publication Info: Audible Audio, 2020; 10 hours.   Hardcover Soho Press, 2020. 303 pages. Source: Library Digital Resources Publisher’s Blurb: After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather's shellshock, her mother's evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father's torturous assignment to an explosives team during WWII; her parents’ years living with Romani Gypsies; and Jacqueline’s own childhood working on farms in rural Kent, capturing her ties to the land and her dream of being a writer at its very inception. An eye-opening and heartfelt portrayal of a post-War England we rarely

  Title: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President Author: Candice Millard. Read by Paul Michael Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2011; 9 hours 47 minutes. Original by Doubleday, 2011, 339 pages Source: Library digital resources Goodreads Blurb: James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, and

  Title: Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving Author: Mo Rocca (read by the author) Publication Info: Simon and Schuster Audio, 2019. Hardback, Simon and Schuster, 2019, 384 pages.   Source: Library digital resources   Publisher's Blurb:  Mo Rocca has always loved obituaries—reading about the remarkable lives of global leaders, Hollywood heavyweights, and innovators who changed the world. But not every notable life has gotten the send-off it deserves. His quest to right that wrong inspired Mobituaries, his #1 hit podcast. Now with Mobituaries , the book, he has gone much further, with all new essays on artists, entertainers, sports stars, political pioneers, founding fathers, and more. Even if you know the names, you’ve never understood why they matter...until now. Take Herbert Hoover: before he was president, he was the “Great Humanitarian,” the man who saved tens of millions from starvation. But after less than a year in the White House, the stock market crashed,

This isn't really a proper review post, because my mind just doesn't seem to be working that way. But I've recently finished a couple of works of non-fiction, one audio, one on the Kindle, and at least have a few thoughts.  First, the books. Both were fairly random selections from the library's Overdrive collection, nabbed in something of a hurry for my road trips. As a result, the print book was read in snatches, the audio book with whatever attention was left after driving. In general, for me the mark of a good work of history is that it makes me care about something I may not have known I was interested in. Both of these books managed that. In print we have:          Title: Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II Author: Adam Makos Publication info: Ballantine Books, 2019. 395 pages   From the author of the international bestseller A Higher Call comes the riveting World War II story of an American tank gunner’s jour

Title: The Hired Girl Author: Laura Amy Schlitz; read by Rachel Botchan Publication Info: 2015 by Recorded Books; hardback 2015 by Candlewick Press Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: Ever since the untimely death of her mother, 14-year-old Joan Skraggs has been desperately unhappy. Under the thumb of her cruel father and three sullen brothers, Joan lives like a servant on their farm just outside of Lancaster, forever cooking, cleaning, and attending to the many demands of the home. But she has little freedom and less support from her family for her love of reading and blossoming interest in education. But when her father tells Joan she can't go to school anymore, it sets off a journey that will see her become first a runaway, then a hired girl on $6 a week, and finally her very own young woman. Set in America during the optimistic years before the First World War, and told through a series of journal entries, The Hired Girl is the story of a young g

  Title: Gone-Away Lake Author: Elizabeth Enright; read by Colleen Delany Publication Info: 2005, Listen and Live Audio. Originally published in 1957 by Harcourt, Brace & World, 180 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: Portia always expects summer to be a special time. But she couldn't imagine the adventure she and her cousin Julian would share this summer. It all starts when they discover Gone-Away Lake--a village of deserted old houses on a muddy overgrown swamp. "It's a ghost town" Julian says. But the cousins are in for a bigger surprise. Someone is living in one of those spooky-looking old houses.   
 My Review:   Just for fun, I have to start by sharing some of the historic covers for this one (one of the delights of old kids' books is seeing how the covers changed through the publication history ). This one was the original. It feels very 1950s to me--much like the covers of books I got in school a decade later. 1989 saw

  Title: Wish Author: Barbara O'Connor. Read by Suzy Jackson Publication Info: 2016, Recorded Books. 4:40. Hardcover 2016, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 240 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: Eleven-year-old Charlie Reese has been making the same secret wish every day since fourth grade. She even has a list of all the ways there are to make the wish, such as cutting off the pointed end of a slice of pie and wishing on it as she takes the last bite. But when she is sent to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to live with family she barely knows, it seems unlikely that her wish will ever come true. That is until she meets Wishbone, a skinny stray dog who captures her heart, and Howard, a neighbor boy who proves surprising in lots of ways. Suddenly Charlie is in serious danger of discovering that what she thought she wanted may not be what she needs at all. 
 My Review:   I enjoyed this story. It's a sweet tale, with a likeable main

Title: The Line Tender Author: Kate Allen. Read by Jenna Lamia Publication Info: Hardback by Dutton, 2019. 384 pages. Audiobook by Listening Library, 2019. Source: Library digital resources Publisher’s Blurb: The Line Tender  is the story of Lucy, the daughter of a marine biologist and a rescue diver, and the summer that changes her life. If she ever wants to lift the cloud of grief over her family and community, she must complete the research her late mother began. She must follow the sharks. Wherever the sharks led, Lucy Everhart’s marine-biologist mother was sure to follow. In fact, she was on a boat far off the coast of Massachusetts, preparing to swim with a Great White, when she died suddenly. Lucy was eight. Since then Lucy and her father have done OK—thanks in large part to her best friend, Fred, and a few close friends and neighbors. But June of her twelfth summer brings more than the end of school and a heat wave to sleepy Rockport. On one steamy day, the tide brings a Great

Title: The Mad Wolf's Daughter Author: Diane Magras; read by Joshua Manning Publication Info: Listening Library, 2018. Original by Kathy Dawson books. 288 pages. Source: Library digital resources Publisher's Blurb: One dark night, Drest's sheltered life on a remote Scottish headland is shattered when invading knights capture her family, but leave Drest behind. Her father, the Mad Wolf of the North, and her beloved brothers are a fearsome war-band, but now Drest is the only one who can save them. So she starts off on a wild rescue attempt, taking a wounded invader along as a hostage. Hunted by a bandit with a dark link to her family's past, aided by a witch whom she rescues from the stake, Drest travels through unwelcoming villages, desolate forests, and haunted towns. Every time she faces a challenge, her five brothers speak to her in her mind about courage and her role in the war-band. But on her journey, Drest learns that the war-band is legendary for terro

Title: Almost Paradise Author: Corabel Shofner. Read by Eileen Stevens Publication Info: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. 288 pages in hardback. Audio edition by Blackstone Audio, 2017. Source: Library digital resources Publisher’s Blurb:  Twelve-year-old Ruby Clyde Henderson’s life turns upside down the day her mother’s boyfriend holds up a convenience store, and her mother is wrongly imprisoned for assisting with the crime. Ruby and her pet pig, Bunny, find their way to her estranged Aunt Eleanor's home. Aunt Eleanor is a nun who lives on a peach orchard called Paradise, and had turned away from their family long ago. With a little patience, she and Ruby begin to get along―but Eleanor has secrets of her own, secrets that might mean more hard times for Ruby. Ruby believes that she's the only one who can find a way to help heal her loved ones, save her mother, and bring her family back together again. But being in a family means that everyone has to work together to support ea