Author: JB Rowley
This second book in the Whisper My Secret series was less interesting than the first. I expected to learn more about the author’s search to find her lost half-brothers and sister but there wasn’t much about the search. The author goes into detail about her family’s life (she had six full-siblings) in the Australian bush and the eventual realization that her mother had three children that were taken from her.
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Author: Margo Lee Shetterly
I thought I was going to miss the movie due to my trip to Christy’s but I lucked out and it was on as a “regular” feature rather than one of our Cinematheque showings. I ordered the book from the Library but didn’t get it finished before seeing the movie (and getting it back late cost me $1 in fines).
The movie focuses on Katherine who was the “human computer” who ran most of the numbers for John Glenn’s first trip into space. Her friends, Mary and Dorothy, also had very active professional lives; Mary became one of the first female (and black) engineers working at NASA and Dorothy became one of the first FORTRAN programmers. After reading the book, I realize that they dramatized a lot of incidents that weren’t covered in the book, but the movie certainly brought the characters to life.
The book starts during the Second World War when the NACA were hiring the brightest mathematicians (many of whom were African-American women) to help design superior aircraft. When the war ended the large corp of “coloured computers” worked to improve commercial flights. Once the space race began, NASA hired most of these women to support research into space travel. While describing the incredible skills of the many women involved in these two agencies, the book also goes into detail about what was happening elsewhere in the country – segregation, the Civil Rights Movement, and inequalities based on sex.
Although the book gives lots of interesting facts about the work these women did, the movie is much more entertaining.
Goodreads Rating * * *
Author: David Bergen
I picked this book off the shelf at the Library because I had read his previous novel, The Time in Between. I don’t remember the storyline of that book, and even though I looked it up online the review didn’t spark my memory at all (perhaps I’ll have to read it again).
In this novel, Iso is a young Guatemalan woman who works in a fertility clinic in the highlands. When an affair with an American doctor leads to her pregnancy she hopes they will have a happy life together. But when the doctor is in an accident and has a devastating brain injury she realizes this won’t be possible. When her child is born the wife of the doctor takes the baby, without consent, to America.
The story tells of Iso’s struggle to regain custody of her child.
Goodreads Rating * * *
Author: Riel Nason
I picked this book up off the library shelf mainly because it was Canadian and had won the Commonwealth Book Prize in Canada and Europe.
I enjoyed the story of Violet, who is in charge of The Purple Barn antique shop while her parents are searching for Bliss, her older brother. The story delves into their happy childhood and the sudden turn that happiness takes as Bliss struggles with bouts of depression. The search for and sale of antiques is interesting and there are quilts for sale in their shop (the author just happens to also be a quilter). There is a surprise twist at the end of the story – one that I didn’t see coming and might easily have missed.
Goodreads Rating * * * *