Reading and Roaming
RECENT NOVEL: LARGER THAN LIFE An American Beauty by Shana Abe An American Beauty, Abe’s recent “novel of the Gilded Age” is fascinating historical fiction. Belle Yarrington was a child of poverty. Left a widow, her mother Catherine struggled to feed and clothe her five children. When Belle was fifteen, she arranged for Belle to work …
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PURE ESCAPISM Crazy for You at the Asolo Theatre With music and lyrics by the Gershwin brothers, this classic of American musical theater was an afternoon of romance, some hijinks, and lots and lots of dancing! In 1930 in a dead-end town in Nevada, earnest Bobby Child tries to revive the theater he’s been sent to shut …
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READING—SIOUX REVOLT IN THE WEST The Lost Wife by Susanna Moore This spare historical novel focuses on events leading up to the Sioux Uprising of 1862. It is loosely based on a memoir by Sarah Wakefield who with her children was held captive for six weeks by the Sioux Indians. In The Lost Wife, Sarah Butts, later Brinton, leaves an …
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RECENT READING Women in Sunlight by Frances Mayes With the publication in 1996 of Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes shone a spotlight on one of the lovely Italian hill towns in Tuscany. Since then, “her” town of Cortona has become a tourist attraction, and she has milked the area and her life there for several other nonfiction …
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