Review: Mrs. Mike

Mrs. Mike by Benedict Freedman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When 16 year old Katherine is sent to stay with her uncle in order to improve her health, she meets, falls in love with and marries Mike Flannigan, a Royal Canadian Mountie. These are very hard times in the early 1900's in Alberta, but Katherine does manage to learn how to survive. Her lung problems improve, probably due to the clean air, exercise and plain food.

This is a love story with all its ups and downs, joy, and heartbreak, and loss. I love reading about how the settlers and Indians survived and took care of each other.

It wasn't until I had almost finished this book that I realized that I was reading non fiction. This made the book more dear to me.

An excellent read.

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Review: The Murder at the Vicarage

The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my first Miss Marple mystery. It was very enjoyable to be able to try to solve the mystery along with Miss Marple, the detectives and the vicar. Agatha Christie lays out the details and clues very clearly.

Miss Marple spends a lot of time in her garden and is able to make observations of the inhabitants of the village. She notices pretty much everything, and especially the little things that others overlook.

Her keen observations lead to logical deductions lead to solving mysteries.

A thoroughly enjoyable read.

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Review: The Street

The Street by Ann Petry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the story of Lutie Johnson and her son Bub. They are African Americans living in Harlem, probably sometime in the forties. The characters in this story were extremely well drawn, to the point that you, as the reader, could feel that you were those people and lived where they lived and could smell the street and see the garbage and corruption.

Lutie worked and studied very hard in order to try to pull them up out of poverty, but life was against her. African American men were refused jobs that paid a decent wage and the women had to work at menial jobs to support them. The men couldn't take it that their wives did all the working, so eventually marriages broke up. This was just the way it was.

Lutie tried to rise up out of that environment. She had dreams of singing and being able to provide properly for Bub, but the rich bosses had all the say.

This book is not a thriller, a murder or anything that could be considered high drama. Its just a very honest, day by day account of the life of one girl and her son. It is one of the best insightful books that I have read and would recommend this to anyone wishing to learn more about the history of the people of the Americas.



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