Okay, let me get this off my chest straightaway. Beach Read, the title, the cover, totally misleading! I knew from reading the summaries that Emily Henry's Beach Read was about two writers, each suffering from writer's block. That's why I picked up the book. I thought the fact that the setting was a beach was going to be a bonus. I love the beach. I love reading about the beach. This novel had so few references to the beach and almost no scenes that took place on the beach. Like I said, totally misleading.

I'm not a romance reader, typically, unless the romance is between a divorced mother of three or an older woman. But Beach Read was the right book for  the right time for me. Just how many tell all political books can one person read in a row. I enjoyed the snarking repartee between January and Augustus. I enjoyed the friendship between January and Shadi. I wouldn't say I really cared about the characters, but I was curious about them and how they ended up where they were at the start of the story. This was an easy, comfortable read.

Now I can get back to reading something a bit more serious. 

I love to read but...

I love to read but...

... at least for the short-term, I think I liked going for a sunrise walk better.

We had a long weekend away at the beach this past weekend. I brought along the SparkNotes for Midsummer Night's Dream. (Yes, the one by William Shakespeare - and don't judge me because I only read the SparkNotes. I'll explain that in a post in another two weeks.) And I brought my iPad where I've got When We Were Sisters by Emilie Richards downloaded. I figured I'd read ...Sisters before shutting off the light at night and I'd read SparkNotes while on the beach. It didn't quite work out that way.

I read a little of ...Sisters on the first night. Then woke up early the following morning to see the sunrising over the Atlantic Ocean. Sitting on the beach in the afternoon, I managed to finish the SparkNotes. (I'm now all set for the Books and Beer Club Anniversary Party two weeks from tonight.)

On less than 6 hours of sleep... and lots of time spent on the beach and the heat and walking over 6 miles, when bedtime rolled around I... well, I went to sleep! The following morning I was up again before sunset, this time to take a 3-mile walk on the beach. After a full day of sightseeing, in the heat, bedtime rolled around and once again, I couldn't keep my eyes open to read. This happened again on day 3 and day 4. The night we arrived home, I was so tired from so many short nights of sleep that I once again was too exhausted to read. Last night was the first night I read in bed for five days. I think that might be a record!

What would you have done in my place?

A tribute to Pat Conroy

One of the members of my community book club had a great idea when we were trying to decide what book to read next. As a tribute to Pat Conroy who died several years ago, why didn't we read a Pat Conroy novel? She suggested Beach Music. Another member had another idea. Why doesn't each person read the Pat Conroy book of his or her choice? It certainly makes it easier for each of us to get a book since most of us rely on the library for getting the books we read.

I looked at the list of books that Pat Conroy wrote. I was pretty sure I didn't want to reread a book I've already read. There are still several that I haven't read but as an avid reader, the title My Reading Life jumped out at me. I figured I'd love to learn about what the reading life of a famous author was like.

(Here's my somewhat embarrassing Pat Conroy confession. My first Pat Conroy book was Beach Music. Next came Prince of Tides. I was positive that only a woman could feel deeply enough to pen these books. It wasn't until I read My Losing Season about 15 years ago that I realized that Pat Conroy was, in fact, a man.)

I really enjoyed this book a lot, learned a lot more about Pat Conroy than I already knew. And I started to think of myself as a reader... and as a wannabe writer. Yes, I know that everyone else thinks of me as a reader. But sometimes I feel like I don't read seriously enough... or enough pages... or enough titles. This book made me realize that everyone else is right about me.

Pat Conroy became a reader because he had a mother who was a reader. She read to make up for the fact that she wasn't well (school) educated. Her reading life became his early reading life. She, and later he, collected high school and college reading lists and read all the books on all the lists. Pat Conroy appeared to be as much a reader as he was a writer. He said he read nearly 200 pages a day - yes - a day - for all of his adulthood! That's a lot of pages.

This was a memoir of the complete Pat Conroy, not just the reader. It includes his writing life and lots of stories from his early family life and his adult life. If you are a fan of Pat Conroy, I'd highly recommend reading this book in addition to all the "famous" Pat Conroy books.

Tell Me How This Ends Well

The Jewish book club I'm trying to get rolling remains really small. At last month's meeting, there were only 3 of us - and a guest. (Thanks, Martha!) When it came time to pick a book for our next meeting in July, I was told by the other two members, who had already read David Samuel Levinson's Tell Me How This Ends Well, that we didn't have to read this book but that it had a really crazy ending. "Let's find another book to read." I hadn't read it yet.

An important premise of the novel is that Israel has been annihilated by three Arab neighbors and there is an influx of Israeli refugees living in the United States and in Europe. Antisemitism was on the rise. That's important, but that's not what the story was about.

The story revolves around the Jacobson family. The Jacobson mom has been given a poor health diagnosis. The three adult children decide that they should spend their mom's final Passover together at the home of the older brother in California. Jacob travels from German, Edith travels from Atlanta, and the parents travel from Texas. They kids plan to celebrate Passover with a family seder - which is part of a reality TV show - and then kill their abusive dad. Yes, you read that right! Kill their abusive dad.

(As an aside, the seder was on a Saturday night, the Saturday after Good Friday. I wonder why the author chose to have what seemed to be the first seder on a Saturday night. The way the Jewish calendar works, first seders never fall on Saturday nights.)

This book, in parts, is comical. The story is told from the perspective of all the children and then from the mom's perspective. In some parts it's dark humor. In other parts, it's laugh out loud funny.  It also gives us a dark vision of what might be in the future of American Jews. That part is frightening. It's hard to really categorize this novel - religious commentary, dysfunctional family, crime drama, and I wonder if that was the author's intention.

While the religious commentary was downright scary and the crime drama was where a good part of the humor came into play, what intrigued me was why the mom, Roz, stayed with the dad, Julian, for all those years if he was so abusive. First thought was that perhaps "in those days" it was difficult for a woman to consider getting a divorce. Then I realized that Roz was only 8 years older than I was, that she contemplated getting a divorced in 1996 - which is exactly when I was in the middle of getting a divorce! Would my family life have fallen apart the way the Jacobsons did had I stayed married? That gave me a lot to think about!

I read this novel while I was on vacation. I guess because it was lighter than what I normally read it might be considered a beach read! I decided that this book is chockablock full of things to discuss. I think it will make the perfect book for a Jewish book club, even though I don't think you have to be Jewish to enjoy it. Now to convince enough other people that this is a worthwhile read so that we can have a larger attendance at our next book club meeting.

I so admire PUBLISHED writers

My good friend, Ronnie Allen, was doing a book signing at a local bookstore this afternoon. I want to support Ronnie in her endeavors and I was curious about the bookstore, relatively new in town. Going to the signing was the perfect opportunity to do both. (To The Next Chapter Bookstore, I will be back.)

Ronnie Allen autographing my copy of Aries: The Sign
Behind the Crime Book #2

Ronnie has just published her second book in what will potentially be a 12-book series called The Sign Behind the Crimes. Her first book is titled Gemini. Aries was released two weeks ago. And she's currently working on the third book in the series, Scorpio.

Once Ronnie decided several years ago that she was going to become a published author, there was no stopping her. We attended a Book Festival in Inverness together. I was interested in seminars I attended. I will admit that Ronnie was much more focused, trying to grab every morsel the experts and published authors were throwing our way. Years later, Ronnie has two published books and a working relationship with a publisher, and I have 2 drafts gathering dust on my computer and in my desk. That's okay. As I mentioned in my first blog post, circumstances took me away from my quest to get published followed by a conscious decision to work on other things first.

As an avid reader and a wanna-be-writer, Ronnie invited me to critique the first or second draft of Gemini. I thought I'd be able to read the book before going to bed, my normal time to read, but I wanted to give the book full attention, not skimming over anything. And I took notes. Lots of notes. Then Ronnie hosted a luncheon where the rest of her non-published writer critique group met and discussed the plot and made suggestions for changes. It was very exciting to be part of the process. Several months later, Ronnie had a publishing deal.

Ronnie's work is psychological thriller with a bit of romance - and sex - thrown in. It's not a genre that I'm naturally drawn to but I am able to recognize the genius of her work. She sure puts together a riveting page turner. She is a master of the plot and her character development is on spot. I can so easily imagine Gemini being transformed to the big screen. I'm also a sucker for books that are written in places that I'm very familiar with. Gemini was set in both Brooklyn, NY, my hometown, and Citrus County, Florida, my current home. I'm not 100% sure but I believe that Aries is set in the five boroughs of NYC. That's always a huge draw to me.

Two of us walked into the book store this afternoon at just about the same time. We'd both read Gemini and were there to get our autographed copies of Aries. The other woman mentioned that she so admires writers. People who can imagine and write down stories. For a brief moment, I thought, "Hey, that's me, too. I can imagine stories and write them down." Then, in my mind, I modified her statement somewhat. I so admire published writers. And I really admire Ronnie.

You should look forward to a review of Aries at this site as soon as I finish reading it. I read through the first few pages on the ride home (no, I was not driving) but still have a few books on my to be read list. I read most of Gemini out on the beach last summer. I'm thinking Aries might make a wonderful beach read for me as well.

28 Summers

I’m still very conflicted over my thoughts regarding Elin Hilderbrand’s latest novel, 28 Summers more than 24 hours after I finished reading it.

It was an easy, pleasant quick read. It was a romance. Perhaps it was a beach read, but I’m not really sure.

The writing in this novel evoked the beach far more than Summerof ’69, which I read earlier this summer. In fact, the beach felt like a character in 28 Summers. As a beach lover, I appreciated that.

Each chapter was a year between 1993 and 2020. She started each chapter with a recap of news highlights from that year. Being a current events junky, I did particularly like that. I especially love what she wrote for 2001. I’m not going to copy the entire thing, but after recollections of 

“A Tuesday morning with a crystalline sky…” she writes, “If there’d been anything else we cared about that year before this happened, it was now debris. It became part of what we lost.”

Now for what I didn’t like. First my small issue. I’m not sure why Hilderbrand thought it was necessary to let us know that Mallory dies at the end of the book right at the very beginning.

My bigger issue was the fact that this was a story about adultery (I hope I’m not laying out a spoiler). The story line revolves around the old movie,"Same Time Next Year." An even bigger issue was that there rarely seemed to be any guilt about the cheating. Won’t go into more detail here, but I found that disheartening.

Wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this beachy novel, but if adultery is not your thing, steer clear.

Vacation Read 1: People We Meet on Vacation

Doesn't People We Meet on Vacation sound like a great book to read on vacation? It was, even if Emily Henry's newest novel, People We Meet on Vacation, wasn't as much as the people that you meet on vacation. More about  the people you go on vacation with.

Poppy and Alex meet on the first day of college. They're coincidentally from the same small town. The two of them couldn't have been more opposite. Then... on the last day of freshman year, the driver that Poppy was sharing a ride home with was none other than Alex. They connected on the ride home and spent time over the summer vacation together.

Poppy has never felt at home in their small town which probably contributed to her strong sense of wanderlust. She convinces Alex to go on vacation with her. And that starts a new tradition. Every summer after, the two of them go on vacation together. They travel on the cheap until Poppy gets her dream job as a travel writer. She actually gets paid to "go on vacation." Then she's able to treat Alex to a great trip on her job. For a few more years. Until things get weird between the two of them and the summer vacations end.

She's got her dream job, living in her dream city, but she's just not happy. Her best friend, Rachel, asks her what she felt was missing in her life that used to make her happy. She realizes that without the possibility of a summer vacation with Alex, that's what she is lacking. Out of the blue, she texts him and asks him if he's free to go away for a few days. I'll spare you the rest of the story.

I loved reading about some of the adventures that Poppy and Alex had on their trips. There's a loose reference to the title when Poppy is able to be whomever she wants to be while on vacation. Almost like a character. And as much as she loves seeing new places, she loves the interactions that she has with people while she's traveling. I'm not much of a romance novel reader so this whole creating a new persona to interact with people you're going to meet was my favorite part of the novel.

I read Henry's novel, Beach Read, in October. Of the two, I preferred People We Meet on Vacation.
 

Book Lovers

How could a book lover who also loves Hallmark movies not love Emily Henry's latest, Book Lovers?

After my last finish (The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle), I needed a book that was going to captivate me and that I'd be able to tear through. Book Lovers was that book. 

Emily Henry starts the novel with her character talking about Hallmark movies. I was hooked! And truly, the plot of the novel could easily be a Hallmark movie. Nora is an intense book agent in NYC. She's very cutthroat, her clients love her for what she can achieve, but they call her "the shark" behind her back. The only relationship she is able to hold on to is with her younger sister, Libby, and her sister's family.

She approaches Charlie, a NYC editor, to see if he'd be interested in a novel by one of her hot authors. Charlie is not interested in that at all. He thought the author's last novel was terrible. And their meeting did not go well at all.

Story then jumps ahead a few years. Libby is pregnant with her 3rd child and needs a little break before the baby comes. She invites - coerces - Nora to accompany her to Sunshine Falls, NC, the setting of one of the novels that Nora represented. The one that Charlie seemed to hate. Libby has a list of things that Nora needs to accomplish on this month-long getaway. Silly things like wearing a flannel shirt, dating a local, riding a horse. Silly things like that.

It's Nora and Libby's first morning in NC. Libby is being a pregnant slug so Nora walks into town and who does she spy in the coffee shop but a guy who looks exactly like Charlie. What do you know? It IS Charlie! They get thrown together repeatedly. The banter between these two main characters is what makes the book so enjoyable. It is just such smart, witty banter. And they can read each other like a book!

I really enjoyed Beach Read. Enjoyed People You Meet on Vacation even more. I loved Book Lovers. If I need a little break from heavier reading and Emily Henry has a new romance novel out, that is what I will choose to read. Highly recommend.

 

Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

 

I love Judy Blume so I'm still amazed that I lived so long without reading her semi-autobiographical novel, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. It wasn't until I came across the title on a banned book list - and why it was being banned - that I knew that I had to read it. (It took me until a year ago to read probably her most frequently banned book, Forever.)

Sally is a young girl living in New Jersey in the 1940s when her brother gets sick and the family needs to move to Miami Beach for the winter, for the sake of her brother's health. Her dad needs to stay back in New Jersey to work so Sally moves to Florida with her mother, brother Douglas and their grandmother, Ma Fanny.

My earliest memories of Miami Beach were in the mid-1960s but there was a lot more similar about Miami Beach in the late 1940s that I'd chuckle over. There was one scene about having to wear a bathing cap into the pool that could have easily been written 20 years later about my cousin sitting by her grandmother Fanny's pool on Miami Beach.

Sally is hesitant about the move but between the new friends she makes, both in her apartment building and at school, and her wild imagine, Florida turns out to not be so bad after all.

Why is this book being banned? Because Sally imagines that Hitler is living undercover as a Jewish old man in her apartment building? And because she imagines him captured - or dead? That is so objectionable - how? Or by whom? I just don't get it.

Anyway, I loved the book and I'd recommend it. Especially to little girls with wonderful imaginations.

Happy Place

Emily Henry's latest, Happy Place, is another book that could be considered a beach read. (The meat of the novel doesn't crop up until nearly the end of the novel.) As such, I started to listen to this one at the beach. It was a great novel to listen to as I was at my happy place.

Harriet's story is told from "real life" and her "happy place," with her happy place being mostly an over-the-top beach "cabin" on the coast in Maine where Harriet and her two college roommates have spent a week every summer. for over 10 years  Over the years, romantic partners are included. The "cabin" is owned by Sabrina's father. His wife #3 (or was it wife #4) thinks it's time that he sells the "cabin" so this is the last summer trip the college roommates will be able to enjoy.

Harriet's happy place becomes a bit less happy (understatement) when she spots her former fiancé, Wyn, at the cabin. What is he doing there? Harriet hasn't told anyone that she and Wyn have broken up. Because this will be the final week at the cabin, the couple decides to pretend that they are still together, as to not ruin the weekend.

The first 90% of the novel is pure fluff, some of it a bit repetitive. And you start to wonder how someone who was able to make it through medical school (Harriet is in a residency in her quest to become a brain surgeon) is so flighty and wishy-washy. For me, the end of the novel, when we really figure out what's going on with Harriet and Wyn, that's where there's some real substance with an important message. A message that gave me satisfaction to hear.

If you like Emily Henry, you should enjoy her latest.

 

Golf Chronicles

I entered a bunch of giveaways on goodreads.com a few weeks ago. Based on this description, I entered to win Golf Chronicles by Joseph Bronson. I won!

From Pebble Beach to St. Andrews:

An Amateur Golfer's Experiences

Join the fun in this celebration of all things golf - a series of life stories, vignettes, and essays from the perspective of an ordinary player who simply loves the game.

Joe Bronson has played golf for the past 40 years at courses all over the world - from 84 of the top 100 US venues to England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, and even Israel. His book includes an account of the hardest holes and the most enjoyable holes he has played, as well as insights into the current state of the game.

From his first round of golf at age 25 to reaching a handicap of four, this dedicated player's passion for the game shines through in his entertaining yet information collection of golf chronicles.

Here is the review (constructive critique) that I posted on goodreads. I hope Joe Bronson reads it the way I intended. 

"I received my autographed copy of Golf Chronicles as a winner of a goodreads giveaway. Thank you, Joe Bronson.

I really wanted to love this book. And Joe, if you're reading this, please read it as constructive criticism. That's what it's meant to be. It will be helpful if you'd like to appeal to an audience of casual golfers who have come to the game far later in life than you did as well as those who golf at your level.

I'm a (not very good) golfer and was anxious to read stories by someone who has played golf around the world, at some of the more famous and challenging golf courses. That's not what this book was. This book contained far too much general information about specific holes at specific golf courses and even though I golf, sometimes the language was too technical (or perhaps too much jargon) for me.

From the description given of the book, I really hoped for a book full of anecdotes by the author about his personal golf experiences. I really enjoyed reading about when your foursome broke two windows by two different golfers, two holes in a row, at Blackhawk. Your first experience at the Old Course at St. Andrews was exactly the type of thing I wanted to read about. I also enjoyed your story about golfing with Arnold Palmer. I wish that had gone on a little longer.

I wish that your stories had been written chronologically, in a more personal way. I wanted to read about how Joe Bronson improved at golf over the 40+ years of playing. What was it like when you went back top play your second round at the Old Course at St. Andrews? How was it different? And I don't mean the layouts of the holes? I mean your actual experience.

I wished you'd explained why you had golf clubs all over the place. Are they at clubs? Do you have homes all over the place? Where is your favorite set?

I also wished you'd included where each of the golf courses you wrote about were located.

A picky, minor detail here. You repeated some of the information at least once, if not more often, making me feel that you'd written each little blurb separately and then just plunked them all together rather than combining what you'd written into a more cohesive piece.

Finally, I also wished you'd shown a bit more humility in what you included in this book. I grew up as an inner city kid, too. Golf wasn't in my realm at all (although somehow one of the kids I grew up with is now a scratch golfer - whatever that means). Had I been a golfer as a young adult, I would have had the opportunity to play at The Boulders in Arizona, at Pinehurst in North Carolina, at The Greenbrier in West Viriginia. At Kiaweh. In Laguna Niguel. (I don't even know if these are great golf courses at all. They seemed impressive when I was there.) Even as a non-golfer back then, I was excited to be at these courses. I was thrilled to attend dinners at Baltusrol in New Jersey. To be able to go into the pro shop and buy my boyfriend a golf ball. I knew what a big deal that was. Even as a person who had only ever played mini golf. I felt none of that excitement or awe in your writing. That was probably one of my biggest disappointments.

If you ever do write the book that I wish this had been, I'd love to read that one!" 

I will let you know if I get any sort of response from the author.

 

Best Sedaris yet!

My entire "immediate' family gathered together - on vacation - in North Carolina right after Labor Day this year. We hadn't been all together for anything but sad and tragic events in over 9 years. It was great.

We were all posting photos on Facebook - of the scenery and of each other. One of my brother's friends recommended Calypso by David Sedaris in response to one of my brother's posts. This latest Sedaris collection of essays is about his North Carolina beach house - and his family. See the connection? We weren't at the beach, but we were in North Carolina - and we were with family.

As soon as I read this guy's comment, I looked up the book, added it to my TBR list... and ended up starting it a few days later. I think this is my favorite of all the Sedaris books I've read.

As much as this book is about family vacations in North Carolina, it's more about aging within the context of being part of a family. It's about loss. It's about watching parents age. I connected with this book on so many levels.

It started with this: ...thinking all the while about my ever-shrinking family. A person expects his parents to die. But a sibling? I felt I'd lost the identity I'd enjoyed since 1968, when my brother was born.

I caught my older daughter getting weepy several times on our North Carolina vacation. She was missing the four members of our family who were no longer with us. Within the past few years, we've lost my parents, my aunt, and a cousin who was more like a sister. My cousin helped me get through the first three losses, and my identity was so tied to hers. I was the little cousin and she was my idol. How many times after my cousin died did I say the exact words that Sedaris used, changing the word sibling to cousin? I expected to grow old with my darling cousin. Now, years later, I miss my parents, but they lived a good life. I expected to live to old age with my cousin. When her life ended, our life together was cut short.

He wrote this about diaries: "After I die, and you read something bad about yourself in my diary, do yourself a favor and keep reading," I often say to Hugh. "I promise that on the next page you'll find something flattering. Or maybe the page after that."

Just the day before, I'd had a discussion about just this with fellow bullet journalers. The question came up about whether or not to keep your bullet journal after you complete a notebook. My thought was, of course keep it! I treasured little things that I found from my parents after they died. I like to think that my kids or grandkids will find my bullet journals a treasure. One of the journalers in my group writes something at the front of each of her journals similar to what David spoke to Hugh. Perhaps I should do the same.

There were some political bits in the book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Then again, we think along the same lines. Enough said. Sad to think that our society is so politically divided right now that some people might not be able to make it through this entire book without throwing it against the wall in disgust. But based on that, I can not recommend this book unconditionally even though I gave it five stars on goodreads.

Letters for Emily

I'm a sucker for an epistolary novel, and that's what made me grab Camron Wright's novel, Letters for Emily from a recent library sale. I went on the final day of the library sale when you can fill a grocery bag with all the books you can for just $5. I selected a few books that I'd heard of and wanted to read, planning to read them first and then bring them to the beach condo that we rent out for our guests to read. I then promptly forgot about the bag of books.

Until yesterday. I needed to photograph a stack of something for one of my daily photo challenges and thought that those long forgotten books would stack up nicely.

Yesterday was the 67th day in the house due to covid-19 and I was feeling a bit restless. So after I photographed the books, I picked up this slim novel, thumbed thru it, and decided to sit down and start it. A few hours later, I had finished the entire novel.

It's a very sweet book. A grumpy old man dealing with dementia clearly loves his favorite grandchild, Emily. It's also important for him that his family remember him as his better self, the one he was before he got sick. So each day, during his lucid moments, Harry works on a book for Emily.

After his death, Emily's mom finds three copies of a handmade book of poems created especially for 7-year old Emily. She keeps one copy for Emily, gives another to her estranged husband, Bob, who is Harry's son. The third copy goes to Bob's sister, Michelle. Each poem in the book holds the clue to being able to open a file on Harry's computer where there is a letter written to Emily. Each letter is meant to give Emily a life lesson. It's clear that each letter is meant to teach a lesson to all the members of Harry's family.

The novel, which is based on letters that Harry Wright wrote for his grandchild, is very creatively written. And the lessons are ones that are valuable to anyone. It was a fluke that I found this novel and that I read it. But for a nice, sweet, inspiring novel, I would highly recommend this.

Divorce is not for the faint-hearted

Rather than writing my random thoughts as part of my review of Every Other Weekend, I decided to put them in an entry of their own. I've pulled some passages of the book and then will share what the particular passage reminded me of from my own divorce. This is bound to be a very long blog entry, not really book-related. However, through my own writing, you'll have the opportunity to get to know me better.

In the driveway, note the brand-new Chevy van. On family trips, scuttle like a bug to get a swivel sweat. Yell "Shotgun," punch someone in the arm, cry to Mom if you have to - whatever it takes. If you're not swivelin', you're snivelin', 'cause the back seat reeks of sweat and swarms with ants when summer rolls around. They sneak up the tailpipe and find their way in, a little button of black squirm where someone spilt Hi-C from a can.

I don't think my memory here has anything to do with divorce. It has more to do with being a mother of three children, driving a minivan. We didn't have swivel seats in our middle row, but we did have captain's seats rather than a bench in our middle row. When I purchased my Toyota Previa in 1991, captain's seats were a big deal. Most minivans still had middle row benches. 

Once the kids were all out of their car safety seats (which happened a lot earlier in the 90s than it does today), it became a fight to sit "shotgun," in the front seat next to Mom. There'd be running for the car. The punching was also a thing. And I thought my family was unique. Ha!

The summer after my divorce, the kids and I were driving from our house in New Jersey to my parents' beach club in New York. On a good day, the drive took a little over an hour. If I'm recalling correctly, on this particular day, the traffic gods were on our side and we hadn't sat in any traffic at all. My youngest was sitting in the captain's seat on the passenger side of the middle row. I can't remember who was sitting next to her and who was sitting in the third row. About 5 minutes away from the beach club, I hear her say, "I have a stomach ache. I have to go to the bathroom." My response was, "Hold it in. We'll be there in a few minutes." She had a can of Yoo Hoo with her when we left our house. I had no idea how much she had or had not consumed. I then hear what sounds like her pouring the Yoo Hoo out of the can onto the floor of the car. That's what the other two kids heard as well. I'm not sure which one of us realized that she'd vomited all over herself, all over the seat.

Maybe this is a divorce story. My ex-husband wasn't helpful in nearly all ways, but until that point, he'd cleaned up a much larger share of the vomit that had come out of the mouths of our children. Someone else's vomit made me want to vomit. It made me feel like vomiting. Who was going to clean this up? Me, of course!

We get to the beach club, I get the kids up to my parents' cabana, and I did my share of whining about having to quickly get back down to the parking lot to clean up the vomit in the car before the temperature got too warm and the stench got too intense. Several of my mom's friends gathered together to get me supplied with rags, buckets, water, cleaning products. I left the kids with my mom and returned to the car.  I scrubbed, I rinsed, I disinfected. And that day, I left my car unlocked in the parking lot of the beach club with the door near what came to be known as "the vomit seat" wide open. 

Yes, "the vomit seat." Didn't the kids we carpooled around town ever wonder why none of my kids would seat in the middle passenger-side captain's seat? A year or so the Toyota was replaced with another minivan, this time a Plymouth, and "the vomit seat" was relegated to the memory books for me and all three kids.

And then Dad would show up, every other weekend and one night a week, looking like someone had blown him up and had left a weird, featureless man in his place. On Wednesdays, he'd take them to McDonald's and they'd eat in silence, and every other Friday he'd pick them up for the weekends at his house. They were long weekends, dull and quiet in a sad, sort of lonely way.

I can't really speak for my kids. I have lots of details about the time they spent with their father when they were kids. But the memory that this passage sparked has to do with how quickly the kids got thru their dinners out with their father on their Wednesday nights. Neither my former husband nor myself were fans of fast food. So he took the kids to actual sit-down restaurants. When I'd take the kids out to dinner, we'd enjoy our time together without me having to fret over cooking a meal that invariably someone wouldn't eat and when dinner was over, we'd get up from the table and go home. I didn't have to clean up and I didn't have to nag them for help. The four of us liked eating out together and it wasn't a rushed affair. Wednesday evenings, their father, who'd driven however long from somewhere in New York City to our house in suburban New Jersey, would be sitting in his car on the street, reading a newspaper until the kids were all home and ready to go out to dinner. They'd pull out of the driveway and seriously, maybe 25 minutes later, the kids would be ringing the bell. Dinner done. Really? He spent at least 4 times as long driving in the car as he did with the kids. Why?

Turns out, Dad does know his way here. Except that when he shows up now, he doesn't even come to the door. He just sits in the car, staring straight ahead, honking.

Again, our stories aren't even close. But they are certainly parallel. And this passage sparks two different and distinct memories. My kids and I remained in our family home after the divorce. So their dad knew his way to the house. (In the book, Nenny, her mother and her brothers move to an apartment with their mother's friend and then quickly moved into a house with their mother's new husband and his two kids.)

First memory. He's sitting in a car. I can't remember if this was in the early days when he still had his own car or later on, after his car had been stolen, and he'd show up in a different rental car each time. He'd be sitting in the car, head facing forward, with a newspaper pulled up right in front of his eyes, but positioned so that it blocked his view of the house or of me. Did he honk the horn? I can't remember for certain. But as soon as the first kid approached the car, he'd put down his newspaper, get out of the car and start screaming at the other two kids, "Let's get out of this dump." Remember, this was the house he and I bought together with the intention of raising our children there together. This happened for years. Whether it was picking up the kids for a weekend or picking them up for a "quick bite." "Quick bite," an expression he used all the time, being taken far too literally. "Let's get out to this dump." This happened all the time. I was the Girl Scout cookie mom. I had moms in the driveway picking up their cookie orders. And the father of my children is standing in the street yelling, "Let's get out of this dump." Another standing joke with the kids going forward.

Second memory. He might know the way to the house. But a while after his car got stolen, he claimed that he wasn't able to secure a rental car for Sunday evenings in order to drive the kids home. He'd send them home with a "car and driver." Eventually, a "car and driver" often showed up on Fridays for the pick-ups. Anyway, the current memory is about the time that the driver was unable to read the handwritten directions that my ex-husband had given him to be able to get them home. This was in the mid-90s, years before GPS was a thing for ordinary drivers. Of course the driver didn't realize he couldn't read the handwritten directions until he and the kids were crossing the George Washington Bridge. As soon as my middle child realized that they were "lost," she started to cry. Eventually, two or three of them were able to somehow, miraculously, direct the driver back to our house. After that, whenever we'd drive from New York City to our house, I'd throw out the question, "Okay, which way to I head now?" making sure that they'd recognize landmarks and would be comfortable finding their way home.

Little Nenny has always been a nervous nelly. She was born with a natural predilection for alarm. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. This simple irrationality governs her whole life - top to bottom, inside and out.

This describes my youngest. She had broken her leg as a toddler and as such, required much more personal space than most kids need. She was afraid of people getting physically too close. She was afraid of being alone at night. She'd "sleepwalk" down the stairs and lie down on the kitchen floor outside my office, without me even knowing she'd come downstairs. That led to me having all three kids sleep in the same bedroom for probably close to a year. It took many more years for her to be able to sleep in her own bedroom, alone. She was afraid of storms. She was afraid of getting lost. She was afraid of animals. (In the midst of writing up this post, she reminded me that she was afraid of our cat as a child. Our cat. That lived in our house with us.) Once when we had a chipmunk loose in our house, she locked herself in her bedroom for about 15 hours with a towel blocking the bottom of the door. Didn't she have to go to the bathroom? She was afraid of terrorists. But more on that later.

Having divorced parents is like living in one of those claw machines at the pizza parlor: you're just hanging around, minding your own business, and then every other weekend you get plucked up and flung somewhere else. Except it's less fun than the pizza place. It's not like Nenny ever thinks Yippee, a weekend at Dad's.

"Just everyone sit down," Dad finally says, and they sit at the picnic table. He irritably hands out the food and they start to eat. Denny's burger is smeared with ketchup and she practically gags, but she knows better than to complain.

Oh boy! My oldest hated ketchup. I wish he'd known better, most of the time, than to complain. The tears.

Even though Mom's pissed, she lets Nenny come along and softens halfway through the drive. She's like that: prone to rage and then settle guilt for exposing the kids to her wrath.

Isn't this a normal mom thing? Or is it exclusive to divorced moms? Didn't we have a certain level of guilt to overcome, just because we were divorced?

"You ever been to a laundromat before?" she asks. 
"I don't think so," Nenny says.
...
Mom smiles. "Boy, are you spoiled!" She looks at Nenny playfully, but Nenny just looks back. She sure doesn't feel spoiled. Spoiled is a new Barbie every week and trips to the skating rink.

At the end of October a new quiet descends upon the house like nothing Nenny's heard before. Though she doesn't know it yet, it's the silent assault of approaching death. Gramma B's been declining for months. That's what they say, "a steady decline," as though she's slowly crawling down a hill.

The memory associated with this is not good. This was in 2004. Both my ex-husband and I were in relationships. He was engaged to be married. For what seemed like a really long period of time, whenever my ex-husband needed an excuse for not showing up for something or not being able to spend time with the kids, he'd bring his future wife's sick mother into play. One Friday he called to say that he couldn't pick up the kids until Saturday because his girlfriend's mother was really, really sick, on death's doorstep, and he promised his girlfriend that he'd spend the evening with the two of them. I had plans for the weekend that involved leaving town. I stuck around longer and made overnight plans for the kids. Death's doorstep? The father of my significant other had recently passed away. I understood death's doorstep. 

On Sunday, once the kids were home, I learned that my ex-husband's future wife's elderly but not too sick mother wanted to go out to dinner. She wasn't on death's doorstep at all. She was old. She wanted a restaurant meal. I was hurt by the insensitivity of him using a death's doorstep excuse. And hey, could he have not lied? Oh wait. I guess not.

"Get under your desks!" Sister Timothy shouts and peers through the blinds. "Oh no, it's the Russians! Dear God, dear God, dear God!" She crosses herself like crossing's the only thing left.
...
Mikhail Gorbachev comes into the room. The Mikhail Gorbachev.

What's my recollection here?  My youngest was a fifth grader on September 11, 2001. Like Nenny, she was a fearful child. I wish I could remember if she was afraid of Saddam Hussein in the days before 9/11 or the days after. Not only was she afraid of Saddam Hussein, she was sure that he was a regular at our Starbucks! She insisted she'd see him there. I later learned that the guy she identified as Saddam Hussein was an artist who spent an awful lot of time at our Starbucks. He looked nothing like Saddam Hussein. And she could never really explain to me why she thought that's who this fellow really was. We (everyone but my youngest) joked around about it. But she was totally serious. 

Denny's on the Baby-Sitters Club #5 again, Dawn and the Impossible Three, because she forgot the newest one at Dad's. That's another thing about divorce: you pack things and forget things and lose things all the time. There's a trail of your stuff like crumbs wherever you go.

I don't remember too much of that going on with my kids and their dad's house. Mostly because they brought everything back and forth each time they went for the weekend. I found out after they'd spent many weekends there that he didn't have tooth paste or shampoo for them. He expected them to bring those things along with them. As if it was a hotel. Yet, he insisted that his apartment in New York was their "real home."

But she doesn't get up right away. She clutches her book and hugs her knees and sits for a minute on the midway stairs. She knows what it's like to anticipate something, then to have your hope shrivel like a deflating balloon. Every time she goes to Dad's she expects something will have changed, that maybe this time he'll ask how she is, if she's happy, if anything's wrong, but he never does. He's so whacked and floating in his own world of grades and naps and dumb historical facts. The house could be on fire and he'd just sit there, with his cup of coffee and his stack of papers and his pile of red pens.

Then again, he'd always show up. He's never not shown up. That's a different kind of disappointment entirely.

I believe this describes my children's situation. He always showed up when he said he'd show up. That doesn't mean he didn't back out of weekends or dinners with advanced warning. He did that all the time. But we always knew in advance.

As kids, I know all three of them wished that something would change. That somehow the dad that picked them up would be a warmer, "daddier" like dad than the one they really had.  And that was the source of their biggest disappointment. They're adults, and I'm not 100% sure that the disappointment each time they see him isn't totally gone.

Every year the fourth graders at school research a California mission and build a model out of sticks or sugar cubes, and every year it's always the same - tiny Indians in the mission gardens, raking soil or planting seeds or forming bricks, or else praying with some priest in a courtyard somewhere, the feeling one of peaceful camaraderie, of a fair and equitable exchange, and every year, walking through the cafeteria where the models are on display, Nenny thinks, Yeah, right. Everyone knows the Indians were slaves.

Next year, she thinks, when I'm in fourth grade, my model's gonna tell the truth, and pictures sugar cubes specked with painted blood and little figure faces twisted with rage.

Mexican houses! That was the project that my kids had to do in first grade. The dreaded Mexican house project. I was still married when my oldest was in first grade. His father and I had just returned from a quick getaway to Cancun where I'd seen actual Mexican houses. I guided him in his construction of his house. I had him do all the work. I don't think they got actual grades on their Mexican houses, but had they, he would have gotten a D-. His teacher told me that his house didn't look at all like how she'd described the houses to the children. So was THAT the project? That was never made clear. Not to the first graders and not to their parents. His house looked just like what I'd just seen in Mexico! Not to mention that he was "sloppily" done. Well, yes! He was 6 years old and I wasn't doing the project for him. His Mexican house fell apart on the day that he carried it home from school. I don't think I realized how many parents did the projects for the kids so those kids showed up with very well-constructed Mexican houses!

Take two. My middle child is assigned the Mexican house project. I knew better this time. "What did Mrs. Hayes say that your Mexican house needs to look like?" I didn't talk about any real Mexican houses I'd seen before or how her older brother's Mexican house was not well-received. She described the house that her teacher had described to her. And that's how her house was constructed. By her. That's when I learned that many of those over-achieving parents built the houses that their children brought in. You should have seen the house the child of the architect brought in! Well, you can imagine!

Take three. My youngest makes it to first grade. She has the same first grade teacher as her older siblings. The entire summer between kindergarten and first grade, I'm dreading the stupid Mexican house project. The school year rolls along and my dread grows. But no mention of the Mexican house. Ever. June comes. First grade is over. No Mexican house. Hooray! It wasn't until about 3 years later when I'd begun my full-time teaching career that I learned why their was no Mexican house project. Apparently the year that my youngest was in first grade, there was a new, young first grade teacher at their school. She thought the Mexican house project was ridiculous. And she made it go away. I owe great thanks to that wonderful teacher who impacted the lives of both my child and me, for the better, without us really ever having any direct contact with her.

That's the extent of my text-to-self connections from Every Other Weekend by Zulema Renee Summerfield. I have tons more anecdotes. Maybe someday I'll write a book.

The Woman Beyond the Sea

The synagogue book club read The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi three years ago. We all loved it. When we saw Yishai-Levi had written another novel, we wanted to read it. I'm going to miss our next book club meeting, but I try to read along anyway. I liked The Woman Beyond the Sea but I didn't love it. I think it's because the story started a little too slowly for me. Once I got to the second half of the novel, I thought it was a page turner. But it took awhile to get there.

Lily and her daughter, Eliya, have a difficult relationship. They've always had a difficult relationship. Shaul, Lily's husband and Eliya's father, keep the family together at an emotional cost to him, too. 

Jewish baby Lily was abandoned by the woman who gave birth to her when she was a few days old. At a convent. As Lily grew up, she took comfort in sitting with a picture of Mary and Jesus, but on some level, she felt like she never fit in there. That not fitting in and something missing from her life follows her through until Eliya is a young woman.

Eliya, likewise, feels like something is missing from her life. Like her mother, she feels that she's missed out on the love of a mother. It's evident in many of the choices she makes during her university days.

Both women need to come to moments of self-acceptance and perhaps forgiveness.

Lily's story is told third person while Eliya's story is told first person. But it's definitely both of their stories. The timing jumps around a little bit, going as far back Palestine during the early days under the British Mandate up through the time just following the Yom Kippur War in 1973. The history of Palestine and then Israel is essential to the plot. (Oh, how I'd love to get back to Tel Aviv and stroll along the beach.

I gave this novel 3 stars on goodreads.com, rounded down from 3.5 and it was only that low because of the slow start. However, I would still highly recommend this novel for book clubs. I think it will lead to a great discussion.
 

Let's talk about A Spool of Blue Thread

Just as I suspected, while A Spool of Blue Thread was just an okay book, the book club discussion was so much better. It was a great book to discuss.

A dozen members of my community book club met to chat about Anne Tyler’s latest novel, “A Spool of Blue Thread”.  Anne Tyler is famous for writing about family relationships. Over time, “the essential concern for family remains the same.” The facilitator of the discussion came prepared with lots of background information about Tyler. In addition to talking about the book, many aspects of the author’s life were discussed as well. One member of our group is a huge fan of Tyler’s and has read all twenty of her novels at least once. I think I've only read 3 or 4. Or maybe 5. After our discussion, I might want to check if I've read "The Accidental Tourist" or not. That sounds like a book I might enjoy, if I haven't enjoyed it already.

“A Spool of Blue Thread” is the story about a house. It’s also about the Whitshank family living in the house. The house was very much a character of the novel. And the story of how the house came to the family was quite compelling. One of the reviews shared said that Tyler’s characters are frequently described as “sweet, sentimental and cozy.” The book club disagreed with this account. They felt that most of Tyler’s characters are quirky and unpredictable. The quirkiness of the characters was a big appeal to many in the group. 

No one in attendance at the meeting disliked the book although some felt it was one of Tyler’s weakest books. Whether we loved the book or felt it was mediocre, there was so much to talk about. Big families have lots of drama. They also have interesting stories. The way the elder Whitshanks came to get married. The way the second generation Whitshanks came to get married. The way that Abby Whitshank picked up strays wherever she went, unless it was to the beach on family vacations. The way the Whitshank family considered themselves “special.” What does it mean to consider yourself part of a “special” family? That debate could have gone on for a good long time. One woman hated the word special. Another woman and I felt that being special wasn't always a good thing... but that's what made our family our own.

Aging was a theme of the novel. Some wondered aloud whether Anne Tyler’s own aging contributed to some parts of the story not quite jiving. There were some missing threads (pun intended). There were some stories that didn't quite seem necessary. Many felt that the ending seemed rushed. It also gave ample opportunities for the group to discuss related experiences. After the death of Abby, Red is very willing to move out of the house. How realistic is that? Why and how would he realize that staying in the beloved family home was no longer the correct choice? How does an older person know when it’s time to give up a house? We also talked about Denny being the prodigal son and about the roles that each of the adult children had within the family. Abby always wanted her children to be friends for life. Is that what we want for our children? I'm happy to report that my three adult children are very close and while I don't take credit for that, it makes me very happy and proud. What expectations do have parents have for their children as adults? What do we want most for our children?

“A Spool of Blue Thread” might or might not be Tyler’s final book. Rumor had it that she was never going to finish this one. But she did. And while there are no plans to publish a next work, she’s still writing.

Judy Blume, Airplanes Falling Out of the Sky, and Me

Warning: This isn’t just a review of In the Unlikely Event, Judy Blume’s recently released adult novel. It’s about a whole lot more. 

However, if you don’t care to read all I have to share, I’ll make my qualified recommendation first. I really enjoyed this book a lot. It was like a young adult novel written for adults. A combination of historical fiction and coming of age.  It’s told from the perspective of 20 characters that gives it a depth that wouldn’t exist if we only heard the point of view of two or three of the characters. It makes it a bit more difficult to keep track of who is who and how the characters are all connected but it definitely enriches the story. If that sounds like something you might enjoy and you won’t be disturbed reading about airplanes falling out of the sky, this book could be for you.

I didn’t grow up reading Judy Blume novels. She didn’t publish her first book, The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, in 1969. When Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret in 1970, I was probably the proper audience for that novel. I might not have been the most mature preteen but by 1970 my reading preferences were pretty advanced and that book slipped under my radar.

It wasn’t until I became of mom of three children that I was introduced to Judy Blume. The perfect gift for my middle child after the birth of her younger sister was The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, Judy Blume’s first book! As my kids got older, I became acquainted with Fudge, Ramona and several other Judy Blume characters. Then, as I fifth grade teacher, I became a true fan of her middle grade novels. Iggie’s House was a favorite of mine.

When a student suggested we read Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret together, I was happy to do so. I loved the book and I especially loved the dialogue it opened up with my student. When I got to the ending of the book, when Margaret gets her period for the first time, some of the story seemed familiar. Had I read it before? In my memory, though, Margaret was outfitted with a sanitary belt and pads, not tampons. That just didn’t seem right. It didn’t match my personal experience. Newly menstruating girls in 1970 wore nasty belts and pads. They didn’t start of using tampons. I found an email address for Judy Blume, sent off a quick email asking her about it. I was delighted a few days later when I received a response directly from the author. Judy Blume told me that at some point, her publisher felt that the book needed to be updated for girls who were going to be reading the book. They would have had no idea what a sanitary belt was! Years later, I was so sorry I hadn’t somehow saved that email correspondence. I loved how approachable Judy Blume was. She was the first author that ever responded to any correspondence I had sent. And believe me, in all my years as a reader, I’ve sent off many fan letters, or letters asking questions of the author. To date, she’s still the only author who answered me directly, not through a publisher or an editor. Yay for Judy Blume!

Now about In the Unlikely Event. Don’t those words sound familiar to you? Hasn’t a flight attendant said that on nearly every flight you’ve ever been on? Between December 1951 and February 1952, there were three unlikely events. Yes, three. Three airplanes fell out of the sky, disturbing the peace of Elizabeth, New Jersey, a city in the flight path for Newark Airport. Newark Airport opened on October 1, 1928 and quickly became one of the world’s busiest commercial airports.  It was the first major airport servicing New York City. (LaGuardia Airport didn’t open until December 1939.) The Port Authority took over the airport in 1948. Yes, in less than three months, three passenger airplanes fell out of the sky, crashing in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Coincidence, conspiracy, UFOs? How? The three tragedies had a major impact on all those living in Elizabeth, New Jersey at that time. Including young Judith Sussman whom we now know as Judy Blume. It took over 40 years for Judy Blume to feel like this was a story she needed to tell. I can’t help but think that a big part of Miri’s story is Judy’s story.

I was shocked to learn about these plane crashes. I had been a travel agent in New Jersey for nearly 16 years. How had I never heard of this? When I was only about a quarter of the way through the book, which grabbed me right away, I had to put aside the book and do some research on these plane crashes. My research got me thinking about a whole lot of other pieces of my life that I haven’t really thought of lately.

My research informed me of the unsafety (relative to now) of air travel as recently as the late 1960s. I grew up flying back and forth between New York and Miami all the time. I was too young to realize how unsafe air travel was. But it makes me wonder if my parents knew what a big risk we were taking. (Two of the planes that fall out of the sky in the novel… in real life… were headed to Miami.) I started thinking about propeller planes, trying to recall when we started flying bigger airplanes, when we started flying jets. I remembered receiving airplane wings from the stewardesses. Always stewardesses. Who had ever heard of flight attendants? I remembered getting decks of cards on the plane that we never played with on the airplane but only after we’d reached our destination. I remembered flying late at night because it made the trip to Miami for our family of four more affordable. I also remembered how my mom, my brother and I would fly down to Miami first and then my dad, who still had to work, would fly down a few days later. (That part still shocks me. My dad was an assistant principal, later a principal and my mom was a teacher. If dad still had to be at work when I flew down to Miami, did that mean that school was still in session? Did my parents pull my brother and I out of school just so we could get a less expensive fare?)

I remembered a trip with Jonathan O who flew down with our family rather than fly alone to visit his grandparents in Miami Beach. “Are you going to eat your roll?” Jonathan asked the gentleman sitting across the aisle from him. Yes, those were the days when eating an airplane meals was a lot of fun.

I brought back memories of really bad earaches as the unpressurized propjets came in for a landing. I remember being carried down the steps from the plane, down to the tarmac (this was way before the age of jetways), by someone in the crew. My mom sure did have her hands full, traveling with two small children, one shrieking her head off with an earache, the other who more often than not threw up as the plane was getting ready to land.

I thought about Eastern Airlines, about National Airlines, about Northeast Airlines (an airline I never would have remembered had my brother not mentioned it a week or so earlier – reminding me of listening to the Calypso song, Yellow Bird, playing over and over again). Airlines of my youth that no longer exist.

I remembered the heartbreaking moment where my mom would drop my cousin off at the airport, so she could fly back to Florida, leaving me fighting back tears in the car. I worried more about her flight being hijacked than about it falling out of the sky. There have always been so many worries associated with air travel.

Eventually, I felt as though my research was done and I got back to reading the novel.  I got to know the characters better. My amazement about the string of tragedies didn’t really diminish. I couldn’t put the book down. I finished it in the wee hours of the night. And then started thinking of all sorts of other things.

I thought about my very strange but very real fear of driving in my car under airplanes. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t afraid of a car dropping out of the sky onto my car with me in the driver’s seat. I knew that sometime in the 1970s an airplane had fallen out of the sky onto Rockaway Boulevard in Queens, a route I drove to work daily the summer of 1976. Back to Google. Rockaway Boulevard plane crash. I was surprised that the crash took place on June 24, 1975. The same week that I got my driver’s license.  That made me wonder if Judy Blume’s heart starts racing if she’s driving her car underneath a low flying airplane.

I thought about the crash of TWA 800, in the Atlantic Ocean in July 17, 1996 and about how just that afternoon, sitting in the Rockaways looking at the planes coming and going from JFK, I had a feeling. A feeling about a plane falling out of the sky into the ocean in front of my eyes. I felt a little terrorized when the TWA jet fell out of the sky just a few hours later. Was that a premonition? What was that all about?

A little more than 5 years later, in November of 2001, a year that had already been marked by great tragedy, another plane fell from the air, much closer to where I spent most of the summers of my life.

My final airplane association, specifically an airplane falling out of the sky association was with Malaysia Airlines flight 370 on March 8, 2014. Isn’t it bad enough when a flight falls out of the sky, but to have it fall over the sky and no one having an idea where the debris was scattered, is that worse than having a plane crash in your backyard? This catastrophe gave me something to wonder about, to try to get to the bottom of (no pun intended) as my mom lay in the hospital taking what would be her last breaths.

Back to In the Unlikely Event. Not only a historical fiction novel, this was a coming of age novel. It’s about family relationships. It’s about changes within families. It’s about banding together as a family and about falling apart. The characterizations were excellent, character development was straight on, and the fast-forward from 1952 to 1987 made total sense. This was a novel that I could sink my heart into.

I think my favorite character was Miri’s nana, Irene. I wonder if that’s because the nana character was 2 years younger than I am now? I certainly can’t relate to any of what Irene went through in her life.

While I was totally satisfied with the plot, it’s ups and downs and resolutions, it still left my mind reeling. About air travel, about wondering, as a little girl, what it would be like becoming a stewardess. About how I hope air travel is so much safer today.

I was drawn to do a little more research. Some of it was a review of what I’d researched before. I read about a change to zoning laws laws prohibiting hospitals, schools and houses of worship in a fan-shaped area beyond the runway safety zone so a situation like Newark Airport being “an umbrella a death” could never happen again. I was grateful for that, thinking back to the battles the parents at the school where my dad was principal trying to get the flight path away from their school which was just a stone’s throw from JFK.

I still wonder how Judy Blume kept this story inside her for all those years. Especially since as I read her story, all my stories came bursting forth from my brain. And not just to the extent that I lost a night of sleep, but to the point where I felt I needed to sit down and write about this and share with anyone who is interested in reading.

Finally, I wonder… Judy Blume, during your life, have you been like me. More afraid of a plane falling out of the sky on top of you while not nearly as afraid of being a passenger in the airplane?

Judy Blume, now 77, says this is the last book she plans to publish. Not because she doesn’t have any more stories inside of her. Because at 77 she’s too tired to have to go through promotional tours. That’s okay. Because I didn’t grow up with Judy Blume, I still have plenty of titles that I can add to my To Be Read List.