Infertility Brings a Marriage Crisis

Marissa wants more than anything to have a baby. It’s hard for her working in a crisis pregnancy center seeing all the women pregnant even if they didn’t want to be. She and her husband, Colin, have tried so hard to get pregnant that it has affected their sex life and their marriage.

Colin, a professor, started having an affair with a student as a release from the pressures of his marriage. Kaitlyn is desperately in love with him. She doesn’t realize he’s married and dreams that he loves her enough to marry her when she finds she’s pregnant. Kaitlyn knows Marissa, but doesn’t realize she’s Colin’s wife. When Marissa suggests that she visit the pregnancy center where Marissa works, Kaitlyn finally begins to think she’ll survive this crisis.

The story is told from three viewpoints: Marissa, Colin, and Kaitlyn. Marissa’s is first person, the other two are third person. All three characters come alive in their portrayals of their problems. Marissa seems the most wronged, but she isn’t without responsibility for her situation. She desperately wants to be pregnant and doesn’t accept the toll it is taking on her relationship with Colin. What Colin did is wrong. It’s not clear he loves Kaitlyn. She was fun and a chance to get away from the pressures of his marriage.

I found Kaitlyn naive for a woman approaching thirty. She may not realize Colin is married, but she does realize as a Christian that having an affair is wrong. She gives herself and expects the result will be marriage not an unwanted pregnancy.

I recommend this book. It is well written. The characters are believable and the ending has a surprising twist. It’s a cautionary tale for husbands and wives allowing problems to come between them. It’s also a book for single women expecting to win a man by giving their body and expecting it to result in marriage.

I received this book from Barbour Publishing for this review.

Long Held Secrets and Murder in the California Wine Country

A family saga starts in Germany and moves to the wine country of California. The Schallers and the Newmans are part of a group of German settlers who immigrate to California in the early 1900s. As a whole, the group prospers and in the present day, the town they founded, in addition to making wine, is a tourist attraction.

Nicole Schaller is the last descendant of the original Schaller family. She’s torn. She loves the valley and the vineyards, but she wants to be her own person and believes that she can’t be herself with the shadow of her family hanging over her.

She’s trying to sell the vineyards, but when showing prospective buyers the property, a skeleton is found in the wall of the barrel room. All Nicole wants is to get the police off the property so she can continue making arrangements to sell. Then if a skeleton weren’t bad enough, Lucas Newman arrives. The Newmans and the Schallers are bitter enemies. Lucas and Nicole haven’t spoken for years, but now the skeleton forces the families to face the secrets that made them become enemies.

I love the setting of this story on the central California coast near Santa Barbara. The atmosphere is perfectly rendered for both the 1900s story and the present day. The story moves back and forth between the two time periods giving us a glimpse of early California.

As usual with stories set in two time periods, one moves faster than the other. The family saga moves slowly unfolding the family feuds and hidden secrets. The present day story is a murder mystery and moves much more quickly. Both were well done, but I preferred the modern story. I thought the historical portion dragged at times.

I recommend this book if you enjoy family sagas.

I received this book from Turner Publishing for this review.

A Whole System Approach to Healing

Two of the most pervasive killers and two of the most difficult to control are stress and inflammation. Chopra and Tanzi present a well researched approach to using your mind and body, or mindbody, to heal yourself from these afflictions.

Today’s world is filled with situations that raise your stress level from traffic to despair over the world situation. In this book the authors discuss what stress is and how to move from being controlled by external stress to using your inner resources to take control of your life. Inflammation is another killer. From the American diet, heavy on sugar, fat and refined grains, to the polluted air we breathe most of us are hurting ourselves with high levels of uncontrolled inflammation.

The authors present a chapter on each of these major health concerns along with suggestions for how to get your stress and inflammation levels under control. In addition to the these two major topics, other aspects of health and wellness are discussed. The book also offers a seven day plan aimed at moving from debilitating habits and beliefs to better health.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in healing and maintaining awareness of the fact that our minds and bodies are integrally connected. The interaction is much more important than most of us realize and can lead to health or wellness. The choice is in how each person interacts with their environment both internal and external.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Murder in a Haunted Girl’s School

Fiona Sheridan, a journalist, can’t get over the murder of her sister twenty years ago. Fiona keeps going back to where her sister’s body was found in the middle of an open field at the abandoned Idlewood School. Idlewood was a school where troubled girls were sent, and it’s rumored to be haunted by Mary, the ghost of a young woman, who died years before the school was founded.

The story encompasses not only Fiona’s tragedy, but tells the story of four roommates who were at the school sixty years ago. They bonded and became each other's strength until on of them disappeared returning from a weekend to visit family. The school called her a runaway, and her body was never found, but the girls didn’t give up their belief that something terrible had happened to her.

The atmosphere at Idlewood is eerie, just right for a ghost. The description of the school, even in it’s abandoned condition can make chills run up your back.

All the girls in this story are troubled from Fiona to the four roommates. Fiona can’t break free from her sister’s tragedy until she decides to take action and write about the renovation of the school. The other four are difficult girls, but I couldn’t help liking them and rooting for them to become successful women. One, Katie, was particularly resourceful and brave.

I highly recommend this book for lovers of haunting mysteries.

I received this book from Berkley Publishing for this review.

A Social, Political, and Cultural Perspective on Paul’s Mission

In this comprehensive work on Paul, we see not only the theology, but also the social, cultural, and political dynamics that helped to form his thinking. The book takes a chronological perspective starting with his Jewish upbringing, follows him through his conversion to a follower of Jesus and his journeys to the early Christian communities.

The book is well written and easy to follow even if you’re not a Paul scholar. I found the early chapters some of the most interesting. It’s easy to ignore the fact that the early Christians living in world shaped by political and social realities. Paul was raised in the Jewish tradition and the scope of that history had a significant bearing on his later writing.

My other favorite chapter was the last chapter where Wright puts the whole thing together. He emphasizes that Paul’s concept of love and the outward looking church were significant factors in the way Christian communities developed and responded to social challenges. He suggests this world view was responsible for founding hospitals to care for everyone and for the development of education.

Weaving the cultural and historical factors of the time into Paul’s story and teachings made the scriptures come alive for me. I highly recommend this book. Whether you’re a Paul scholar or even particularly religious, this book will make you think and, I hope, bring a new level of understanding to Paul’s Letters.

I received this book from BookLook Bloggers for this review.

Does More Equal Happiness or Prosperity?

We are conditioned to look at GDP (Gross Domestic Product) as a measure of economic progress for the country. The economists love this number. It gives them a standard to measure against. But, for the average person what does the GDP say about our lives? Are we happier because it’s high? Is the quality of life better? These are interesting questions tackled by The Growth Delusion.

This book, while examining difficult economic concepts, is written for the average person to understand. This may not be appropriate for experts, but it gives the average person insight into what the experts are talking about. Economists are traditionally caught up in looking at the wealth of nations and ranking countries on their economic progress. They believe that they understand the workings of the economy and are therefore justified in telling people whether they should be happy with the way the country is going.

In this book, the author discusses three major areas: the problems of growth; what growth tells us about ourselves and the developing world; and finally a look at the factors that relate to happiness and well-being. Although I enjoyed the first two sections, I found the last section most persuasive. The Industrial Revolution was great for the wealthy, but the poor suffered mightily. Are we heading for the same problems with our emphasis on growth? The poor and middle class plus the environment may suffer most for our emphasis on growth.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Religion, Philosophy and Romance

After an unsettling meeting with an old friend from seminary, Father Kavanagh wanders through Central Park. To escape the rain, he takes shelter in The Cloisters. He’s hoping to be alone, but Rachael Vedette, a museum guide, wanders into his sanctuary. Their unexpected conversation changes their lives.

Rachael is a survivor of the Holocaust in France. Her father, a Medieval scholar, studied Abelard in the hope of bringing Abelard’s ideas to the modern era and garnering him the honor he deserves. Rachael protected her father’s work throughout her own ordeal, now she feels compelled to share it with Father Kavanagh.

The novel revolves around the story of Heloise and Abelard, an iconic love story that echoes through the centuries. It is also the story of Rachael and Kavanagh and the struggle to bring the story of the Jews into the rightful place in philosophical thinking, a task that Abelard paid dearly for.

This is a beautifully written book. It’s a book to be savored, not read quickly. The love story and the foray into philosophy and religion present much food for thought. The characters are real people struggling with mighty issues. The author did an excellent job of making both the middle ages and the modern era into backgrounds that enhanced the novel.

I enjoyed both the romance and the philosophy. It’s a book worth reading more than once.

I received this book from Net Galley for this review.