The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm reading Go as a River, historical fiction from Shelley Read; I'm listening to the audiobook version of Mary Otis's Burst, a story about a mother and daughter; and I'm reading Mary Sharratt's historical fiction, Illuminations.
What are you reading these days, bookworms?
01 Go As a River by Shelley Read
Victoria is the last surviving female in a family of complicated men. She's running her family's rural peach farm in Colorado. Wilson Moon is a drifter displaced from his tribal lands.
A chance meeting shifts the paths of their lives forever.
When tragedy strikes, Victoria flees into the wilderness as the Gunnison River threatens to flood her home.
Go as a River is based on the true story of the destruction of the town of Iola, Colorado, in the 1960s.
02 Burst by Mary Otis
Mary Otis's debut novel Burst explores a fraught mother-daughter relationship.
Viva and Charlotte have always been a team. Young Viva overlooks and covers for her mom Charlotte's drinking, while Charlotte drags them from town to town as she takes advantage of people to get by and moves on when she's burned their bridges again.
As Viva gets older, she immerses herself in dance and distances herself from her mother.
Burst is told from both Viva and Charlotte's points of view.
I received a prepublication audiobook edition of this book (to be released April 25) courtesy of Libro.fm and Zibby Books.
03 Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard Von Bingen
Hildegard Von Bingen began seeing visions at a young age, and her family offered her to the church at age 8. She became an anchorite, walled up in a monastery although she yearned to roam the outdoors.
Mary Sharratt offers an exhaustively researched, fascinating historical fiction account of the life of the 12th century mystic who later spearheaded the building of a convent and became a Benedectine abbess.
Mary Sharratt also wrote Revelations, about the life of Margery of Kempe, a mother of fourteen whose radiant visions led her to stun medieval British society with her vow of celibacy and ambitious pilgrimage halfway around the world.