I bought this book from Amazon.com before moving to the DC area, and I must say, it has been quite helpful. The information (hours, phone numbers) is still current, and it covers a variety of issues. Whether you're looking for kids' activities of trendy night spots, this book has it all.

If you are moving to the area, and will be without an extended support network initially, I'd recommend buying this book, to provide you with new ideas, and to fill you in on life in general here.

Some drawbacks. The authors definitely love this area; that's great, but I feel they are too optimistic on their neighborhood descriptions. Reading this book, you'd think all of DC and the surrounding areas were safe to live in, but the reality is the opposite. Sometimes they are a bit too "PC" in their descriptions, and this takes away from reality. Additionally, sometimes things are difficult to find in the index.

Overall though, a great buy!

A must for anyone interested in learning more about the area or are planning a visit. Well written, informative and interesting. My highest recommendation!

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At the moment this book on "Jewish Baltimore" is most popular in Baltimore (#1) and Pikesville, MD (#3). Little wonder it should be selling well in Baltimore and Pikesville, a suburb adjoining Northwest Baltimore, part of the Greater Baltimore Jewish ghetto.

In "Jewish Baltimore" Gilbert Sandler recounts the long, slow trek of Baltimore's Jews from East Baltimore (where my father was born) through Northwest Baltimore (where my parents first lived after they married) to the neighborhoods of Forest Park and Park Heights Avenue (where my grandmother Julie lived) on to Pikesville (where I grew up) and even further northwest to Owings Mills.

"Many of Sandler's essays invoke famous names in Baltimore history," says the blurb on the book's dustcover. Included among the "famous names" Sandler invokes is my family's name, which never seemed famous to me when I was a child (or thereafter).

The book has two main features: essays and photographs. A number of the essays are based on columns Sandler has written over the years for the Baltimore Sun newspaper and for the Baltimore Jewish Times. The book is subtitled quite aptly "A Family Album. " It is a photo album of all of Baltimore's Jewry. The photos are superbly chosen and the captions are well researched, nicely written, and enhance the excellent pictures.

Historically, Jewish Baltimore was decidedly not a single community. There were separate German Jewish and "Russian" (really Central and Eastern European) Jewish communities. And they were truly separate. The German Jews had come first to Baltimore and they looked down on the "Russian" Jews.

This book is bittersweet for me. It brings back some wonderful people to me, some who are now dead. But it also brings back to me the feelings of discomfort, even pain, I felt about the highly segregated situation in which we then lived where the "colored people" lived separately from the "white people," where Jews lived separately from those who were not Jewish, and where German Jews lived apart from the "Russian" Jews. All of these and other ghettos around Baltimore were based on "restricted housing" covenants and on the ingrained narrow customs of prejudice.

Gilbert Sandler evokes with warmth the history of Jewish Baltimore and he neatly skirts most of the less warm and cozy memories some of us have who lived as members of Jewish Baltimore.

A lovely "Family Album" it is. An account with balance between the bitter and the sweet it is not.

This is a book that could describe my life in pictures.

I was born in Pikesville and had lived there all my childhood. I grew up living nearby my grandparents on Park Heights Avenue, grew up knowing every place of Reisterstown Road. And I grew up as a Jewish girl who went to Camp Louise every summer of her life and spent those lazy summers on the White House (Camp Louise) lawns making friends with girls who even now I still keep in touch with.

It's a book that'll describe your life. Trust me: it described mine.

The book Maryland a Delaware Canoe Trails is written in a very usable form with all the required information to get you to river and tell you what you will see and get you home. Great book.

Ed Gertler is as reliable as GOD

It has been several years since I read this book, but it was very good. Elizabeth Massie is an excellent historical fiction writer and storyteller. All I can tell you is that Maryland was a slave state and that Anne is transported back in time and held prisoner on a slave ship. She must find a way to escape. The summary should have been longer, but it gives you a fairly good picture. This is just a great story and very well researched. Read it!

Maryland: Ghost Harbor is an exciting story about time travel between today and the 1840's. Two good 8th grade friends learn first hand how terrifying slavery was when one is sent back in time to take the place of a runaway slave who was thrown forward in time. Not only is this an excellent story, it teaches some history, too. Young readers and adults would like this one. I sure did! I understand it is out of print. Wish that wasn't the case. But I see it might be available used. I found one in the library.

The foreword notes that the Sharpsburg area was the first organized American community to suffer both from combat and the sustained presence of two opposing armies. The combat was, of course, the September 1862 battle of Antietam, well known as the bloodiest day in American history. Ernst says that her book is one of stories. In so doing she observes the trend to explain history through the eyes of common people, rather than those of the generals, presidents, kings and other eminencies who have fueled traditional historical narrative. Ernst has dug deep into the letters, diaries, I-was-there personal accounts and oral histories of the days immediately before and after Antietam, as well as during the carnage itself. Ample photographs give human form to the names encountered throughout the book. The result is a smoothly written work blending the military and civilian dimensions of Lee's invasion of Maryland that, on a golden September day, etched into national memory names such as the Dunker Church, the Cornfield, the Sunken Road and Burnside's Bridge. Some of these stories illuminate dark subjects. Ernst's discussion of slavery in Frederick and Washington Counties reminds us that it was more prevalent in Western Maryland than we realize-the 1860 census recorded over 4600 slaves in the area. That there were then still three slave-selling sites in Hagerstown suggests that this region was populated by more than unionist German immigrants who opposed slavery. Ernst might have cited the definitive work on 19th century Maryland slavery, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground. The devastating psychological and economic impacts of the Antietam campaign on civilians are powerfully told through anecdote. The words of Allen Sparrow and Alexander Root convey their terror during the fighting in the passes of South Mountain, which preceded Antietam by several days. Ernst's vivid account of this battle sets the stage for the following days (including the tale of the soldier who shared a blanket with a comrade, only to learn at sunrise that he'd slept with a corpse). Maps showing topography and troop movements would have been helpful. The eighth chapter concludes movingly with accounts of area civilians coping with a landscape that had changed dramatically in the preceding two weeks. Their short-term travails included suspicious federal troops on the lookout for renegade rebels and anyone thought to be helping them; longer-term, of course, these folks faced years of rebuilding and, in some cases, economic ruin because of the battle. The last two chapters venture beyond the Antietam campaign. Lacking the depth of the first eight, they summarize the impact of the Confederate 1863 Gettysburg and 1864 Monocacy campaigns on the region. Chapter nine begins in 1863 with federal conscription in the region and Lee's move through the area on his way to Gettysburg, where the battle is touched upon through the eyes of several locals. Post-Gettysburg skirmishes in the area are mentioned, followed by the rebel retreat. Jubal Early's move through the area in July 1864, en route to his raid on Washington, concludes the chapter. The treatment of these latter campaigns seems a cursory afterthought given the compelling details surrounding Antietam that comprise the book's theme. Ernst returns to slavery in her last chapter. She describes the impact of the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns on the "peculiar institution," and local reaction to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. She relates how free blacks and slaves were recruited into the Union army. Harrowing extracts from the diary of Otho Nesbitt, a Clear Spring slaveowner and unionist, tell of kidnapped blacks taken south by retreating rebels. Though the Confederates are known to have done this at times (as in 1863, in Chambersburg, PA), Ernst has unearthed a compelling eyewitness account of black abductions by rebels during their three major sojourns into Maryland during the Civil War. Her account also prompts us to remember that pro-union did not always mean anti-slavery. Letters and diaries describe the unrelenting efforts of families rebuilding homes, farms and lives shattered by battle. Men return from soldiering to farm again; a few were lucky enough to marry the sweethearts they'd left behind. Plowers of fields unearth the bones of the dead, and legend claims that bloodstains in field and hearth mysteriously reappear for years. Poignant reunions of veterans and civilians include the account of Kate Rudy visiting the newly elected Rutherford B. Hayes, whose injured shoulder at South Mountain her family had nursed. To Afraid to Cry is poorly referenced in places. Ernst throughout cites secondary works that themselves cite original sources, but her notes frequently provide only the former. Worse are references improperly cited. On page 194, for example, the author refers to the relief civilians felt following the departure of the union army, and gives as her source pages 244-45 of an unpublished dissertation by Duncan. But those pages in Duncan do not contain that information. The same page mistakenly attributes Duncan's prose to that of an 1862 New York Times reporter. And Landscape Turned Red, perhaps the definitive work on Antietam, is improperly assigned a quotation-"the whole country forlorn and desolate" does not appear on page 34 of that book, as Ernst's page 194 says it does. Another problem appears on pages 45 and 50, where the author quotes William Owen of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. She cites as her sources not Owen himself but The Gleam of Bayonets-while listing Owen in her own bibliography (albeit with incorrect title, publisher and publication year). There are also inconsistencies in the treatment of misspellings inside original quotations-on page 23 the author corrects the misspelling of "privilege," yet on page 45 she lets stand the misspelling, "permiscus." Kathleen Ernst has knit a splendid archival tapestry that enriches our grasp of the seamy underside of war-the suffering of everyday people caught in the crosshairs of America's bloodiest day. Many stories of Maryland's pivotal role in the Civil War await telling, and Too Afraid To Cry shows us how captivating they are coming straight from the mouths of Marylanders.

Even the well read student or scholar of the Civil War can develop a slanted impression of the War in reading the bulk of the literature which concentrates on stategic and tactical details and the trials and hardships of the military personnel who fought it. In reading this very well written book of the experiences of the Western Maryland civilians who endured the conflict in this theater of the war, one gains a perspective of how total the horror of this war was for those who not only had to live through the actual battles, but remained to deal with the death and suffering in which they found themselves engulfed. These hardships (physical, emotional and economic) were endured repeatedly and for years after the actual battles and occupations.

I consider this a must read for any serious Civil War enthusiast.

Junk picker Carrie returns to her hometown, Oysterback, Maryland on the Eastern Shore to attend her mother's funeral. Carrie and her sister Earlene have been at odds for years over lifestyles and even while trying to honor the dead they argue. Both await their brother Delmar to return with the ashes from Florida, but he is being detained by police for an incident at the airport where metal detectors were set off by their mom's urn.

Carrie is shocked to find Professor Jack Shepherd sleeping in her mother's bed. He explains that he normally lives on a boat, but her mother said he could use her house while she was away if he needed to for some reason. Her former boyfriend, the married Hudson Swann, also accosts Carrie. She clearly explains to Hudson that they are the past though she admits to herself that she wouldn't mind a future with Jack.

Though there is a dark comical backdrop, WHOLE LOT OF TROUBLE is a deep relationship drama that showcases family rivalries and lingering disagreements and disappointments. The sisters are a delight to observe fuss and fight while their respective descriptions of their brother paint quite a picture of him. Though some tension caused by "outsiders" seems unnecessary, fans will appreciate this no person is an island tale that emphasizes everybody needs somebody sometimes.

Harriet Klausner

Fans of Helen Chappell, rejoice! Oysterback, the delightful town on Maryland's Eastern Shore that was the setting for two earlier collections, has returned, as deliciously quirky as ever.

For protagonist Carrie Hudson, Oysterback is less than delightful -- it's her hometown and she left it behind her a long time ago. Now her mother's death has brought her home, home to deal with everything she thought she'd left behind her a long time ago.

By turns humorous and touching, A WHOLE WORLD OF TROUBLE is Chappell at her best.

This is a story of a man who creates his own world of loneliness and satisfaction. He feels happy if he does not have to go out or speak to strange and unknown people. His reactions are very passive and he is undecided about most of the things. Unfortunately, he does not realise and admit that his world could not give him all protection he would like to. He becomes more and more depressive and unable to live a real life. Even more, he gets lost in his own world! It seems that nobody can help him - mostly because he does not leave anybody in his vicinity. Only a woman, who is in many things very different - is young, talkative (too much, I think), full of energy, daring and also thoughtless - could maybe change him and even she must be almost aggressive. I like neither Macon nor Muriel. I think, the author a bit exaggerates in description of their characters. They both look quite unreal to me. But it is worth to read this book and if you take some things from Macon's and some from Muriel's character, you could get an interesting person. And some descriptions of Macon's thoughts are also well written.

Macon Leary writes city guides for business travelers who hate to travel. His books feature the "American" restaurants in cities like Paris. And Macon is sure to check the flush of the toilets in hotel rooms. "Bring a novel to read on the plane," he advises his readers, "to protect yourself against chatty strangers".

His own life is organized by all the little systems he devises to minimize the drudgery of everyday existence. It gets worse when his marriage disintegrates after the senseless death of Ethan, his twelve year old son who was executed during a holdup at a fast food joint. Macon showers while agitating his dirty laundry underfoot, he sleeps between two sheets which have been sewn together so he never has to make the bed, and he feeds Edward, Ethan's dog, in the basement of his Baltimore-area home by dumping kibble down the coal chute.

Macon meets Muriel, an awkward, pushy, self-reliant young woman, when Edward is turned away from the kennel because he's taken to biting. Macon leaves the dog at Muriel's clinic and, upon his return, she announces that Edward likes her and that she can train him to not bite. Muriel uses her role as Edward's tutor to worm her way into Macon's boring, reclusive life and, as he soon finds out, she has a few scars of her own that need healing. Muriel turns out to be the best thing that has happened to Macon, and vice versa, but you want to kick Macon for not seeing it right away, when his estranged wife tries to get back into his life.

The Accidental Tourist was the first novel written by Anne Tyler that I had read. I have since read many of her other novels, but this one remains my favorite. The characters are well-written, developed without being overexplained. Tyler allows some room for interpretation without coming off as sketchy. She allows readers to dislike her characters at first, but gradually allows the reader to piece together all the traits showing the characters to be real and honest.

Even with its upbeat(compared to some of her other novels)ending, The Accidental Tourist still has the power to elicit an emotional response to the grief and fear her characters feel. From Macon and Sarah, grieving and angry after the murder of their son, to Edward, the son's dog, who is both a a mourner, and, at times, a stand-in for the absent child, to frizzy Muriel, the characters are sympathetic, sometimes frustrating, but always appealing.

Anne Tyler is a talented writer who uses language to explain, develop, and create life and emotion. She is truly one of the most talented writers today.

More of my favorites this time! Even though these are older novels, they are new to me and went on my favorites list the first read through. When I covered "The Accidental Tourist" by Anne Tyler, her other books were still unknown to me. Since then, I've read several, more than half, and am looking forward to the remaining titles, which I expect to love just as much. All are deeply moving and engrossing stories, but "A Patchwork Planet" keeps surfacing as this chapter unfolds, so that's where we'll go this week.

How do men create such delightful female characters, and women males? It's not as common as you might think, but a few do this remarkably well. Anne Tyler is a master at creating believable, faulty, lovable men, with all the blundering endearment you might recognize in a close friend or family member. With Macon Leary, her "tourist," she personified the quiet closed men we all know, but with remarkable insight. In "A Patchwork Planet " we meet very different man who is growing up in his 30's. Barnaby Gaitlan is a man complete with childhood demons and neurotic lapses of thought, but so rich with a simple honor, that he's unforgettable.

Barnaby is the younger of two sons, the "black sheep" of an industrially successful family living on the ends of an early fortune. In his teens, he found the same trouble to get into that many boys find, pilfering in their neighborhoods, but while his friends raided the liquor cabinets, Barnaby was irresistably drawn to the photo albums and personal momentos of strangers. Finally bearing the brunt of one such caper, Barnaby is sent to a private school for light reform, and guilt follows him for years after. From his continually harping mother to his own personal reparations, Barnaby pays for his deeds long past any reasonable amends. Working for a simple service oriented company that provides physical help for elderly people, he thrives in the mundane realism that everyday life brings.

From the depths of her heart, Tyler seems to pull the best of her characters through the muck of baggage we all have, and the result is as shiny and bright as the tin man's armor when he attends Ozma's birthday celebration.

No one can create quirky, beguiling, harmless misfits as well as Anne Tyler, and in A Patchwork Planet, Barnaby Gaitland steps onto the page. He's the black sheep of an affluent family, living in a rented basement studio, divorced, wanting to be a better father to his daughter, working for Rent-a-Back, a service company that does household jobs its elderly clients can no longer manage. Along comes 'an angel,' and his life seems to take a major turn for the better. But niggling in the background of this too-perfect arrangement are hints of Barnaby's dissatisfaction - and he can't quite put his finger on what's wrong with the relationship till he's accused of theft. Then his REAL angel is revealed...
Wonderful plot structure, wonderful characters, wonderful conclusion.

Anne Tyler's gift for characterization is never more in evidence than in the narrator of this novel. Barnaby Gaitlin is the black sheep of a wealthy Baltimore family, divorced, working a menial job, struggling to maintain a semblance of respectability and good relations with his ex-wife and nine-year-old daughter. A chance encounter on a train to Philadelphia brings him together with Sophia, a calm, competent woman with whom Barnaby finds love and a chance at happiness. But life is never as simple as it seems...

As with many of Tyler's books, what seems at first to be a collection of inconsequential and even trivial events gathers a surprising cumulative force, due to the profusion of funny and moving observations about life, death, love and family along the way. The strength and emotional power of Patchwork Planet lies as much in the incidental encounters with Barnaby's clientele (he works for a service called Rent-a-Back, performing odd jobs for elderly and disabled folk) as with those nominally closer to him. By the end the reader is totally wrapped up in Barnaby's emotional odyssey, rooting for him to win through to happiness, which at the last he seems on the verge of attaining, though not in the way one might have expected.

A Patchwork Planet will speak to anyone who has felt overwhelmed by the small daily battles of existence, unloved by loved ones, and insecure about his/her place and purpose in life; in other words, just about anyone.

"Charm City" is Laura Lippman's second mystery set in Baltimore. (The other one is "Baltimore Blues.") In this effort, the city is excited about the possible return of professional basketball, and the savior is "Wink" Wynkowski, a business tycoon. The return of basketball is seriously jeopardized when the local paper prints a story detailing Wink's sordid past and current financial problems. Tess Monaghan, who used to be a reporter before her paper folded and who is studying to be a private investigator, is hired to investigate the article. As it turns out, the article was not supposed to have been published, but it seems someone used the newspaper's computers in order to print the story without authorization.

There seem to be two prime suspects, and they are the co-authors of the story. One of the two is a friend of Tess, and he seems to have used her as his alibi for the night in question--even though the two were not together. The other co-author is a young and brash reporter with some unsavory journalism techniques. When Wink turns up dead in what appears to be a suicide, the stakes have suddenly gone up, and Tess must worry about her own life. Throughout all of this, she also must deal with the beating of her uncle and the greyhound with bad breath that she cares for while her uncle is in the hospital. When men start tailing her, Tess must watch her every step lest it be her last.

"Charm City" fails in many ways. Sadly, it is not well written, and it certainly could have been improved by a good editor. Too often, Ms. Lippman says things she simply does not mean, as, for example, when she uses pronouns carelessly. At other times, the writing is simply bad. The grammar errors are only one problem, though. A more serious one is that the third-person narrator is not honest; Ms. Lippman has not played by the rules of the mystery (though it is not clear at all that the clues are there to begin with). Finally, the protagonist, who praises her own skills at the end of the book, does very little right and by all rights should have died but for a nifty bit of deus ex machina. All in all, "Charm City" is a disappointing effort.

I picked up Laura Lippman's "Charm City" because several of her mysteries had been nominated for awards and the locale was Baltimore--a city I have some knowledge about.

Perhaps this book, the second in the Tess Monaghan series, is not up to the level of Lippman's other offerings. For me, the mystery didn't work that well for several reasons. One was that Tess, the ex-reporter, and now an aspiring P.I, though without a license, seemed to be living rather well for one without, one assumes, much of an income. Her youthful boyfriend/lover Crow, a rock star, just didn't come across as much of a personality--though I admit that perhaps due to age I have my biases toward rock stars and their lifestyles.

Other points: the writing is sometimes ok, sometimes a graceful sentence; but mostly the prose seems jumpy and inconsistent. The plot holds some interest, though it takes most of the book to juice up interest. Mystery types also will be put out with the third-person narrator voice, and the lack of a logical ladder of evidence that would permit one to deduce the identity of the culprit.

Ms. Lippman does have Tess trip around many familar Baltimore spots, and her descriptions of what Tess eats indicates that the author enjoys food.

Perhaps another in the series might be a better read. But based on "Charm City," I think I'll look elsewhere.

Charm City, which is a nominee for the 1997 Edgar Award for best paperback original, is one of the top five mysteries I read in the last year. I really connected with Tess Monoghan, a young ex-journalist who is almost grudgingly turning into a private investigator. Just as fascinating are Tess's family and friends: Uncle Spike with his rampant malapropisms, the ravishing bookstore owner Kitty, Crow, a local rock star boyfriend who anybody but Tess would be protective of, and finally Esskay, a greyhound with an astounding capacity for pancakes and love.

Charm City's mystery is deftly plotted, with surprising twists and turns and an ending that was richly satisfying. But the thing that puts Charm City at the top of the mystery pile is elegant writing and such a loving rendering of an aged East Coast city that the author would be getting comparisons to literary novelists such as Anne Tyler were the book straight literary fiction. Luckily for us, Lippman chose to write mystery, blending her top-notch talents with a storyline that just won't quit!

Like the meditation gardens in Kyoto, Japan, which is the underlying metaphor to the book (in case you couldn't guess), the story of Ellen is told with subtlety and hidden shades of meaning, which the reader is invited to visit and probe.

Ellen is presumably narrating her story to her daughter. The defining event in Ellen's life is the early, barely realized love and loss of her cousin Randall, who was killed in World War II on Iwo Jima in the Pacific. It will tragically affect and color her other relationships forever, although how, is not fully revealed to the reader immediately, but discovered along the way. While Ellen is the central character, it soon becomes apparent, through other of the book's characters, that the author has a broader message in mind than Ellen's private sorrow. Slowly, we learn how war affects and sometimes ruins the people it touches.

Randall ironically has a love of Japanese culture, particularly the treasured book Gardens of Kyoto, which he bequeathes to Ellen along with his diary. It is the first of many ironies which we are invited to discover, observe, and puzzle out, including glimpses of relationships rather than the relationships themselves. With deft strokes, Kate Walbert gives us just enough information to do just that, painting her landscape and weaving her story through flashbacks and flash forwards, often in a surreal or dreamlike fashion. At times one starts to lose a sense of time and place, reality and fantasy, although Walbert always manages to bring us back. As layers of secrets unfurl, the story keeps drawing us up until the very end.

This is an accomplished first novel, at first impression deceptively simple, but leaving the reader with remembrances of lingering sadness and loss long after it is finished.

The Gardens of Kyoto is a beautiful, heartbreaking, lyrically-told story that I highly recommend. The narrator, Ellen is telling her story to her daughter from some future vantage point. Right from the beginning, Walbert lets us know that things aren't always as Ellen remembers them. Ellen is telling the story of when she first met her cousin Randall, and how the Oak trees lined the drive. But then, just a few paragraphs later, she thinks perhaps it may have been walnut trees. Most of the shifting memories are not as obvious and not as harmless as that. Her story involves her relationship with two men--Randall, her cousin whow is killed in World War II, and Henry Rock, a young army officer she meets just before he goes to the Korean War. Her relationship with these two men and the devastations of the wars upon all of them shape her life irrevocably. Her memory plays tricks on her, plays tricks on us. She hides bits of the story from us, until these facts surface in shocking ways. It is as if she doesn't want her daughter (and us) to know the truth until we absolutely have to. The gardens of Kyoto serve as a wonderful metaphor for what remains after a war, for obvious illusions. Ellen is like the gardens, or is she? While the gardens were specifically spared in wars, as was Ellen, Ellen's life is ultimately changed for the worse as a result of these wars. The story Ellen tells, the ghosts who haunt her life, provide us with a fascinating tale that I highly recommend.

Rather than reading this book, I may have absorbed it! "The Gardens of Kyoto" is unique in plot and characterization. The tone is almost gothic, with a wonderful sense of place, as Walbert explores the cycle of lost love -- damaged men and the women who love them -- caused by war.

Serious and studious Ellen falls in love with her cousin Randall, only son born to an influential judge late in his life. A lonely boy with a passion for vocabulary words, reading encyclopedias and seeing ghosts, Randall reveals his real self to Ellen, trusting her with his secrets. Raised by a woman he later learns is not his mother in a rambling farmhouse once used by the Underground Railroad to harbor escaped slaves, Randall is sent to Okinawa after WWII and dies under circumstances equally as mysterious as the rest of his life. He bequeaths Ellen his private journal and a book about the gardens of Kyoto, Japan. The book figures prominently throughout the story, the book's subject matter a haunting symbol of life.

Years later, as a college student, Ellen meets a young soldier, Lt. Henry Rock. Henry falls for Ellen's troubled and indifferent friend, Daphne, and begins a correspondence. Intending the letters for Daphne, Ellen is the one who receives them and falls in love with the writer. After the war, Henry finds Ellen and begins an ill-fated relationship.

The book spans the 1940's and 1950's, through World War II and the Korean War. In the book, the men who survive the wars, Roger, Ellen's brother-in-law, and Henry are "damaged", so affected by their experience that they are changed forever, unreachable by those who love them.

Chapter 11 of book 5 quotes Iago, "'I am not what I am ....' We are none of us who we are." This paragraph flew out at me as soon as I read it. Everyone hides his private demons from public view. A wonderful summation of the novel.

This is a starkly written novel, and perhaps it is this starkness that provokes the emotions. As I read this, I truly did hurt for Ellen and her losses. I felt Randall's isolation, Henry's disillusionment, Daphne's self-destructiveness. The minor character's, such as Randall's birth mother, Ruby, and Ellen's sisters, Rita and Betty, made brief appearances, but left big impressions. The writing and even the dust jacket are sepia-toned, but the story is so emotionally colorful that it is hard to walk away from it.