Sandra Nachlinger's Blog, page 9

Kilauea #Lighthouse, #Kauai, Hawaii - #SaturdaySnapshots

One of the most interesting places we visited on Kauai was also about the windiest place I've ever been. A docent who volunteered on the grounds offered to take our picture, which was nice, but we both felt as if our hair was standing on end and our clothes were about to be ripped from our bodies. Everyone said the strong winds were very unusual. They were definitely unusual for me! The views from the point were dramatic, however, and well worth the windy buffeting. 
[Click on photos to enlarge.]

The lighthouse became operational in 1913. It was decommissioned in 1976 and a three-year restoration was completed in 2013.
The lighthouse is located within the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge.
I zoomed in a little to capture waves crashing against the cliffs.
The seas all around us roared and churned. Those white spots on the hillside are birds. Even the birds were having a hard time with the wind. Until I saw this picture, I didn't realize how dorky I looked
in my black sneakers and socks. Oh, well. What the heck.
I did a lot of walking that day, and my feet were comfortable.
The lighthouse interior was not accessible.
We were told that whales were probably in the area. It was the right time of year. However, with the white-capped waves, we couldn't distinguish a whale spout from spray from the breakers! Our resort was in Princeville, and the lighthouse was only about seven miles down Highway 56.





Saturday Snapshots is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate: Post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky on West Metro Mommy Read's website (link: HERE) Photos can be old or new and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
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Before We Were Yours - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

I enjoy books where there are two plots going on at the same time. In Before We Were Yours, one of the stories takes place in the late 1930s. The second one is set in present day. Slowly the relationship between the two plot lines is revealed.

Before We Were Yours is a 5-star book, based on a true story, that I won't soon forget.

Beginning:

Prelude
Baltimore, Maryland
August 3, 1939

My story begins on a sweltering August night, in a place I will never set eyes upon. The room takes life only in my imaginings. It is large most days when I conjure it. The walls are white and clean, the bed linens crisp as a fallen leaf. The private suite has the very finest of everything. Outside, the breeze is weary, and the cicadas throb in the tall trees, their verdant hiding places just below the window frames. The screens sway inward as the attic fan rattles overhead, pulling at wet air that has no desire to be moved.

56% on my Kindle:
I spin around and bolt for the backyard, but I'm running in sand, the long wrap dress clinging around my legs, my flip-flops slapping. I catch the flash of a blue shirt near my grandmother's palmetto hedge just in time to put on the brakes and act casual coming up the boardwalk.

Genre: Women's Fiction / Family Saga
Pages: 339
Amazon Link:  Before We Were Yours
Copyright 2017

Synopsis:

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family’s long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

              


Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
Click HERE to join other Friday 56 bloggers (sponsored by Freda's Voice)


Twitter: @SandyNachlingerFacebook: sandy.nachlinger

Beaches - #Kauai, #Hawaii - #SaturdaySnapshots

Recently my husband and I spent six days and five nights in beautiful Kauai, Hawaii. For the next several weeks I'll feature photos from our vacation.

Today's subject is Kauai's beaches. Having spent many childhood vacations at Padre Island and Port Aransas on the Texas Gulf Coast, I'm accustomed to those gentle waves and warm shallow waters.  Kauai's breakers are much more dramatic. They roar, smash into rocks, surge toward the shore, and send clouds of spray skyward. I love that! 

The photos below were taken on the eastern half of the island. We stayed in Princeville on the northern shore of Kauai and explored up and down the coast.
(Click on photos to enlarge.)

Anahola Beach Park
Nice paved walking trail overlooking 
this section of beach.
Spouting Horn Park, near Koloa
View from the grounds of our resort.
I believe that's Kalihiwai Bay.
We had hoped for sunny skies, an escape from the rainy Pacific Northwest. That's not the way things worked out. However, even though rain fell almost every day during our vacation, we ignored the weather and had a great time.

Click on the + or - to enlarge or shrink the map.







Saturday Snapshots is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate: Post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky on West Metro Mommy Read's website (link: HERE) Photos can be old or new and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
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The Marsh King's Daughter - #BookBeginnings on Friday and The #Friday56

    Karen Dionne is a master at leaving "hooks" at the end of each chapter. One time I got to the end of a chapter and the cliffhanger was so intense that I was forced to take a break and stop reading for a while, just to catch my breath. I didn't intend to spend all day reading this book, even though I had a cold and wasn't leaving the house, but I just couldn't stop. If you like novels with unique characters, a strong female protagonist, twists and turns, and plenty of suspense, you'll definitely enjoy this thriller.
    A short fantasy by Hans Christian Andersen, also titled "The Marsh King's Daughter," is the source of the book's title. That story weaves through the book. The opening of Andersen's story forms the prologue of this book. The first actual chapter starts like this:

Book Beginning:

Helena

     If I told you my mother's name, you'd recognize it right away. My mother was famous, though she never wanted to be. Hers wasn't the kind of fame anyone would wish for. Jaycee Dugard, Amanda Berry, Elizabeth Smart - that kind of thing, though my mother was none of them.
     You'd recognize my mother's name if I told it to you, and then you'd wonder - briefly, because the years when people cared about my mother are long gone, as she is - where is she now? And didn't she have a daughter while she was missing? And whatever happened to the little girl?

Friday 56 from 56% on my Kindle:

The ice moved up and down as I walked, like the river was breathing, like it was a living thing and it was offended by this arrogant human girl-child who dared to walk across its frozen surface. I imagined the River Spirit reaching an icy hand up out of the water from one of the many gaps in the ice, grabbing my ankle, and pulling me in. 

Genre: Psychological Suspense
Length: 314 Pages
Amazon Link: The Marsh King's Daughter
I borrowed this ebook from my local library.

Synopsis (from Amazon): 
Helena Pelletier has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, and a business that fills her days. But she also has a secret: she is the product of an abduction. Her mother was kidnapped as a teenager by her father and kept in a remote cabin in the marshlands of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Helena, born two years after the abduction, loved her home in nature, and despite her father’s sometimes brutal behavior, she loved him, too...until she learned precisely how savage he could be.

More than twenty years later, she has buried her past so soundly that even her husband doesn’t know the truth. But now her father has killed two guards, escaped from prison, and disappeared into the marsh. The police begin a manhunt, but Helena knows they don’t stand a chance. Knows that only one person has the skills to find the survivalist the world calls the Marsh King—because only one person was ever trained by him: his daughter.

                             


Anyone can participate in Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56.
Click HERE to connect to other Book Beginnings posts (sponsored by Rose City Reads) 
Click HERE to join other Friday 56 bloggers (sponsored by Freda's Voice)


Twitter: @SandyNachlingerFacebook: sandy.nachlinger

Good Grief - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

Author Lolly Winston does a great job of taking readers through a grieving widow's mourning. I enjoyed this touching and realistic novel. The writer's style and humor appealed to me too.

Opening:

How can I be a widow? Widows wear horn-rimmed glasses and cardigan sweaters that smell like mothballs and have crepe-paper skin and names like Gladys or Midge and meet with their other widow friends once a week to play pinochle. I'm only thirty-six. I just got used to the idea of being married, only test-drove the words my husband for three years: My husband and I, my husband and I... after all that time being single!

Teasers:
Page 118 in Trade Paperback (LOVE this description):
We creak past the living room, which is crowded with antiques that remind me of old ladies. Wingback chairs with tea party posture. Pedestal tables with demure padded feet.

Page 151:
You think, This is it: I'm at the bottom now. It's all uphill from here! Then you discover the escalator goes down one more floor to another level of bargain-basement junk.


Genre:  Women's Contemporary Fiction
Amazon Link: Good Grief
Book Length: 355 Pages (including reading group guide)
Copyright 2004

Synopsis:
The brilliantly funny and heartwarming New York Times bestseller about a young woman who stumbles, then fights to build a new life after the death of her husband. Thirty-six-year-old Sophie Stanton loses her young husband to cancer. In an age where women are expected to be high-achievers, Sophie desperately wants to be a good widow - a graceful, composed Jackie Kennedy kind of widow. Alas, Sophie is more of a Jack Daniels kind. Downing cartons of ice-cream for breakfast, breaking down in the produce section of supermarkets, showing up to work in her bathrobe and bunny slippers--soon she's not only lost her husband, but her job and her waistline as well. In a desperate attempt to reinvent her life, Sophie moves to Ashland, Oregon. But instead of the way it's depicted in the movies, with a rugged Sam Shepherd kind of guy finding her, Sophie finds herself in the middle of Lucy-and-Ethel madcap adventures with a darkly comic edge. Still, Sophie proves that with enough humor and chutzpah, it is possible to have life after loss.










Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up  HERE



First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be At The Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.Link at  I'd Rather Be At The Beach
Twitter: @SandyNachlingerFacebook: sandy.nachlinger

Snowy Photos - #SaturdaySnapshots

Even though the Seattle area is located in the far northwest corner of the United States, our weather isn't as frigid as one would expect. However, we have had several snowfalls this winter. Here are a few photos from February 22nd. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

This snowfall was especially light and fluffy.
Flakes floated like feathers from the sky.
Lilacs outside my dining room window.
I'm looking forward to their blooms in spring. I love the look of morning sunshine
on freshly fallen snow.




Saturday Snapshots is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate: Post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky on West Metro Mommy Read's website (link: HERE) Photos can be old or new and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
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All the Light We Cannot See - #TeaserTuesday and First Paragraph / First Chapter / Tuesday Intros

Mariek-Laure Leblanc: A blind girl lives with her father in Paris, near the Museum of Natural History where he works.
Werner Pfennig: An orphan, enchanted by a makeshift radio, grows up in a mining town in Germany.
Anthony Doerr's fascinating novel about these two young people in Nazi Germany and France during World War II is unforgettable. From the blurb on the book's back cover: "Marie-Laure and Werner, from warring countries, both having lost many of the people they loved, come together in Saint-Malo, as Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another."



Here's the opening:

7 August 1944
Leaflets

At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, they say. Depart immediately to open country.

Teaser from Page 156 in trade paperback copy:
He pulls up a ring in the center of the floor. Beneath a hatch waits a square hole out of which washes a damp, frightening smell. "One step down, hurry now."

Synopsis:
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

Genre:  Historical Fiction
Amazon Link: All The Light We Cannot See
Book Length: 545 Pages
Author Website: Anthony Doerr
NOTE: I downloaded this ebook from the library.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up  HERE



First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be At The Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.Link at  I'd Rather Be At The Beach
Twitter: @SandyNachlingerFacebook: sandy.nachlinger

Not Just Trees and Rivers - #Hiking - #SaturdaySnapshots

Although much of the joy of hiking comes from walking among beautiful trees and along pristine rivers, I've also encountered interesting man-made delights along the way. Here are photos of a few of them.
(Click on pictures for a closer look.)

Chair made from skis at Wapiti Woolies,
a shop on the road to Mount Rainier A playground for seniors, near the senior center
at Lake Sammamish  "Hip Hop" by Georgia Gerber
Bronze sculpture at Ruston Way, Tacoma Sidewalk along Ruston Way, Tacoma "The Kiss" by Richard Beyer
Percival Landing, Olympia, WA
Rusting remains of a logging saw
Clear Creek Trail, Silverdale, WA

Reminder: Seattle is a busy port.




Saturday Snapshots is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate: Post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky on West Metro Mommy Read's website (link: HERE) Photos can be old or new and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
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Miller's Valley - #TeaserTuesday and First Chapter / First Paragraph / Tuesday Intros

I've almost finished reading Miller's Valley, and I'm loving it. Here's the opening:

First Paragraph:
It was a put-up job, and we all knew it by then. The government people had hearings all spring to solicit the views of residents on their plans. That's what they called it, soliciting views, but every last person in Miller's Valley knew that that just meant standing behind the microphones set up in the aisle of the middle school, and then finding out afterward that the government people would do what they planned to do anyhow. Everybody was just going through the motions. That's what people do. They decide what they want and then they try to make you believe you want it, too.

And here's a Teaser from Page 166:
I guess there are times in your life that tell you what you're made of, the weeks after you bring a colicky baby home from the hospital, the year when you lose your job and the number on your checking account just gets smaller and smaller until it looks like it's going to wink out like daylight on a January afternoon. This was my time.

Synopsis:
For generations the Millers have lived in Miller’s Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship and the risks of passion, loyalty, and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be “a place where it’s just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content.” 

Genre:  Women's Fiction / Family Saga
Amazon Link: Miller's Valley
Book Length: 257 Pages (Trade Paperback)
Author Website: Anna Quindlen
NOTE: I picked up this book at a book-swap shelf.

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by The PurpleBooker. Post two sentences from somewhere in a book you're reading. No spoilers, please! List the author and book title too.
Link up  HERE



First Chapter/First Paragraph/Tuesday Intros is hosted by I'd Rather Be At The Beach. To participate, share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you're reading or thinking about reading soon.Link at  I'd Rather Be At The Beach
Twitter: @SandyNachlingerFacebook: sandy.nachlinger

Hansville Greenway Hike, #Kitsap Peninsula - #SaturdaySnapshots

After days of rain, the hiking group was lucky to have a partly sunny Friday for our hike. Here are a few photos from Hansville Greenway, Kitsap Peninsula, Washington. (Click on photos to enlarge.)

Much of the hike followed wide paths.
They were clearly marked and easy to follow. Can you see the face in this
mossy stump? Our hike led us to a viewing platform
where we ate our lunch... overlooking this marsh. A beaver lodge!
A closer look at the forest floor along
the trail revealed this bright red wood. 
Yes, it really was that red.
Back in the tiny town of Hansville, we stopped
for ice cream at a cafe overlooking Puget Sound.
The land in the distance is Whidbey Island.






Saturday Snapshots is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate: Post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky on West Metro Mommy Read's website (link: HERE) Photos can be old or new and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don't post random photos that you find online.
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