Caitlin Hicks's Blog: Book Reviews, page 4
May 1, 2023
‘Unforgettable’ heroine returns
An uncontrollable series of events transforms the lives of two teenagers the night of RFK’s assassination when a black dancer and a white singer chase his ambulance through the streets of Los Angeles. A suspenseful road trip from California to Canada in 1968.
Seventeen-year-old, white, sheltered high school senior Annie Shea doesn’t realize she’s already forming into the rebel she aches to become. A conservative Catholic from Pasadena, California, she solos in the scandalous stage play HAIR, and falls for a talented black dancer from Watts. When her sister, Madcap, gets kicked out of the house for dating a Jew, Annie volunteers for Robert Kennedy’s Los Angeles Democrat campaign for President, and proudly rides alongside his car as part of his entourage.
On a hot June night, inside the crowded ballroom of The Ambassador Hotel, Annie and Lucas witness RFK’s triumphant presidential primary. Seconds later, RFK is shot, and the two follow his ambulance through the streets of LA—a tragic and chaotic ride that upends their young lives forever.
Annie ditches her first day of university to drive Lucas and her brother to Canada to evade the law. Throughout the suspense of their hasty road trip up the coast of California, Annie unearths her brother’s unbearable secrets. She connects with Lucas’s generous heart while sorting it out: justice and privilege, racism, sexuality, love, and the dark forces of war.
“Annie Shea grows up! I am so pleased to present this story to you, especially those of you who got to know Annie when she was twelve-going-on-thirteen in the first book of this series, A Theory of Expanded Love.
BIG FAMILY * THE SIXTIES“In Kennedy Girl, Annie ventures away from the bosom of her big family and begins to make choices for herself in the world. Growing up in the Sixties was a heady experience for so many— the excitement of being on the verge of true possibility. A new consciousness was forming all around—into what was hoped would be real social revolution.
“This book is written in the tradition of historical fiction insofar as it recreates in California a world in which we lived more than fifty years ago. The year 1968 was bombarded with unsettling headlines. In the midst of a youthful revolution of free love, civil rights, and women’s liberation, there were public murders: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and the service members who made up the daily death statistics of the Vietnam War. Although thousands of miles away, this nightmare seeped into the carefree, California Girl lifestyle that Annie inhabited, claiming the lives of loved ones.”
KENNEDY GIRL takes place five years after A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE. Hicks retained her rights to THEORY and an updated version is now being simultaneously published by Sunbury Press
A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE1st book in series, being re-released: https://caitlinhicks.com/wordpress/theory-expanded-love-hilarious-beguiling-bravely-truthful/
KENNEDY GIRL2nd book in series, same popular, lovable protagonist, five years later
https://caitlinhicks.com/wordpress/fiction-2/kennedy-girl-a-new-novel-by-caitlin-hicks/
Here is a link to the Writer’s Festival where I have been invited to speak:
https://wordonthelakewritersfestival.com
BOTH books on SUNBURY PRESS website
https://www.sunburypress.com/collections/fiction-1
February 20, 2023
A childhood such as mine
“Maybe my story can be a tiny beam of light in a large, dark cave,” says Anneke Lucas in the podcast that begins to tell her story, from her book QUEST FOR LOVE.
“Elite pedophilia is the world’s best protected secret .
“Many of these stories can never be told because the victims are dead. Yet, as more survivors of organized abuse and mind control are speaking out, we cannot possibly be expected to go public, considering the extensive trauma and the obvious potential for re-traumatization, and from the massive, uncensored victim blaming that is sure to follow, not to mention the threats and intimidation tactics by the network.
“The message most deeply embedded in the network, and the apparent reason for much of the horror and violence, was and still is all about secrecy.
“It requires courage to read my story, which sheds light on a truth that has been successfully hidden for too long. Absorbing this truth is the most important and the most helpful thing one can do.”
Dedicated to All the Victims and Survivors of the World-wide Network, Anneke begins to tell the story of when she was ten, the journey she took, from abuse to healing, to transformation. On this podcast, we begin that journey in Anneke’s own words:
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January 16, 2023
Meeting Sebastian: unexplained vertigo
A chance encounter in the dark winter days of December 2022. A benevolent energy in a hospital room with snaking tubes and mystery signs, a newborn and a lifetime of important people, all gathering for Sebastian. Except for the visitor, missing the opportunity to connect.
The post Meeting Sebastian: unexplained vertigo appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
December 18, 2022
Winter Solstice: The Trouble of Christmas
This year, December 2022, three years after the world was turned upside down, The Grief of Life and The Trouble of Christmas are practically members of our family.
Erin Em says: “It’s been a year since I’ve seen my father. Just from thinking critically and standing up for freedom of choice as to what I’m allowing into my body, I probably won’t see him alive again.” You can listen to her entire story in the podcast The Night Shift.
A Mother remembers her son, Guy
“December is a heavy month for me and my daughter. We will not be celebrating Christmas this year – maybe never. My son’s official date of death was Dec. 21, 2021, Winter Solstice Day. It’s when they stopped his heart medication with my consent. But I think he “died” on December 5th.” You can hear her own words in the podcast, 31 days in 2021. “Do what’s in your heart,” she told me.
And so we dedicate this podcast to this young man who left the earth too early. And to his mother and sister, who must live without him.
Guy’s favourite bumper sticker:`“Beam me up, Scottie, there is no intelligent life down here.” One of his favourite quotes by Clarence Darrow:
“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.”
What has not changed:the sun dips into the horizon at 4.16 in the afternoon. As the night deepens, we gather together around the light. Here’s a story to celebrate all of us at this time of year.
Christmas in Cornucopia was inspired by a real town named Cornucopia on the south shore of Lake Superior where my little family and I spent a magical November and December when our son was just two. We were broke, but so gobsmacked by the beauty, the pristine quality of nature and the warmth of the community in that town, that this tale practically wrote itself. I especially treasure the story because it is an ode to creativity. Christmas in Cornucopia shines a light on the distant hologram of childhood; a portrait of what we all want: love, a place to call home, inspiration, joy, belonging.
This December, we offer our special temporary broadcast on Monday, December 19th through Boxing Day, 2022, here, and wherever podcasts are found.Beautiful four-part harmonies by After Hours, a vintage Sunshine Coast vocal jazz quartet are featured singing Christmas favourites: ‘Winter Wonderland’, ‘The Little Drummer Boy’, ‘Silent Night’ and ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’.
You can find other seasonal stories on this podcast, Rachel is Born, My First Christmas with Rachel, The Christmas Monster of Ripple Rock & the Introduction to the Podcasts with Read Island Santa. These are the earliest podcasts recorded in November and December of 2019 – just before the world broke apart with COVID.
The best of SUNSHINE COAST MUSICIANSLocal flavour comes in and out of the stories in song, by After Hours, a vocal jazz quartet, singing Christmas favourites in four-part harmony: ‘Winter Wonderland’, ‘The Little Drummer Boy’, ‘Silent Night’ and ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’.
Shelley Dillon sings Bach/Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria’ with jazz pianist Ken Dalgleish. Original music with Blaine Dunaway on mandolin/violin and the late Shari Pandit on keyboards, creates and records two tunes for the podcast Read Island Santa Claus. Seacoast Players, classical string quartet plays ‘La Rejouissance’ ( flute solo) from Handel’s Fireworks Suite.Ken Dalgleish plays a haunting jazz melody on the grand piano at The Sunshine Coast Arts Centre to go with the podcast The Christmas Monster of Ripple Rock.
REALLY GOOD NEWS on an altogether different topic:This past year my audiobook of A Theory of Expanded Love won ‘Distinguished Favorite’ in the New York City BIG BOOK AWARD:
And unexpectedly, the title made it to
Book Riot’s list of 100 Best Books about Women and Religion,a list shared by amazing well-known writers Arundhati Roy, Alice Hoffman, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, Ann Patchett, Margaret Atwood and more for books such as The God of Small Things, The Dovekeeper, The Poisonwood Bible, The Color Purple, the Patron Saint of Liars and The Handmaid’s Tale.
I said O M G.
This is what they said: “Below, you’ll find 100 titles in which women take creative, inquisitive, constructive and critical postures toward religious traditions: those of their birth: those that belong to others, and which they encounter with an open spirit; those that they work to reform; those that they adopt. No two books are the same. All are vibrant; all hold the potential to illumine.”
https://bookriot.com/100-must-read-books-about-women-religion/
The post Winter Solstice: The Trouble of Christmas appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
Winter Solstice broadcast of 2022
The post Winter Solstice broadcast of 2022 appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
December 17, 2022
Celebrate! Winter Solstice with Christmas in Cornucopia
The Trouble of Christmas
This year, December 2022, three years after the world was evacuated and then turned upside down with panic and fear and disease, as the Winter Solstice nears, The Grief of Life and The Trouble of Christmas are practically members of our family.
2022 has been a year of reckoning.
Erin Em says: “It’s been a year since I’ve seen my father. Just from thinking critically and standing up for freedom of choice as to what I’m allowing into my body, I probably won’t see him alive again.” You can listen to her entire story in the podcast The Night Shift.
A Mother remembers her son, Guy
“December is a heavy month for me and my daughter. We will not be celebrating Christmas this year – maybe never. My son’s official date of death was Dec. 21, 2021, Winter Solstice Day. It’s when they stopped his heart medication with my consent. But I think he “died” on December 5th, when they intubated him without informed consent, and assaulted him with 60 plus drugs.” Her story can be heard in the podcast, 31 days in 2021.
“I have no idea what you can do as a remembrance,” she told me. “Do what is in your heart. And so we dedicate this podcast to this young man who left the earth too early. And to his mother and sister, who must live without him.
Guy’s favourite bumper sticker:`“Beam me up, Scottie, there is no intelligent life down here.” His favourite quotes by Clarence Darrow:
“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.”
“Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.”
What has not changed: the sun dips into the horizon at 4.16 in the afternoon, darkness fades up to a black and starry sky. It’s below freezing. As the night deepens, now more than ever – we must gather together around the light of our love & respect for each other. Here’s a story full of light, to celebrate all of us at this time of year.
Christmas in Cornucopia was inspired by a real town named Cornucopia on the south shore of Lake Superior where my little family and I spent a magical November and December when our son was just two. We were broke, and a little bit lost at the time, but so gobsmacked by the beauty, the pristine quality of nature and the warmth of the community in that town, that this tale practically wrote itself. I especially treasure the story because it is an ode to creativity. Christmas in Cornucopia shines a light on the distant hologram of childhood; a portrait of what we all want: love, a place to call home, inspiration, joy, belonging.
This December, we offer our special broadcast on Wednesday, December 21st through Christmas Day.We are making it available to listen to and download, for free, at SOME KINDA WOMAN, Stories of Us, here, on caitlinhicks.com and wherever podcasts are found.
Christmas in Cornucopia begins with “In everyone’s life there are magic times!” and traces a child’s love for ice skating and her childhood friend, a drummer, back to a moonlit moment on the dangerous, frozen lake one Christmas Eve.
Beautiful four-part harmonies by After Hours, a vintage Sunshine Coast vocal jazz quartet, are featured singing Christmas favourites: ‘Winter Wonderland’, ‘The Little Drummer Boy’, ‘Silent Night’ and ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’.
You can find other seasonal stories on this podcast, My First Christmas with Rachel, The Christmas Monster of Ripple Rock and the Introduction to the Podcasts with Read Island Santa. These are the earliest podcasts recorded in November and December of 2019 – just before the world broke apart with COVID. Click back to the beginning of the podcasts to locate these three podcasts.
The best of SUNSHINE COAST MUSICIANSLocal flavour comes in and out of the stories in song, by After Hours, a vocal jazz quartet, singing Christmas favourites in four-part harmony: ‘Winter Wonderland’, ‘The Little Drummer Boy’, ‘Silent Night’ and ‘I’ll be Home for Christmas’.
AVE MARIASeacoast Players, the popular classical string quartet plays a piece from Handel’s Fireworks Suite, ‘La Rejouissance’ with a flute solo. Shelley Dillon sings Bach/Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria’ with jazz pianist Ken Dalgleish accompanying.
Original music is also showcased with Blaine Dunaway on mandolin/violin and the late Shari Pandit on keyboards, creating and recording two tunes for the podcast Read Island Santa Claus.
Ken Dalgleish plays a haunting jazz melody on the grand piano at The Sunshine Coast Arts Centre to go with the podcast The Christmas Monster of Ripple Rock.
REALLY GOOD NEWS:This past year the audiobook of A Theory of Expanded Love won ‘Distinguished Favorite’ in the New York City BIG BOOK AWARD and you can still download it from Chirpbooks.
And unexpectedly, the title made it to Book Riot’s list of 100 Best Books about Women and Religion, a list shared by amazing well-known writers Arundhati Roy, Alice Hoffman, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Walker, Ann Patchett, Margaret Atwood and more for books such as The God of Small Things, The Dovekeeper, The Poisonwood Bible, The Color Purple, the Patron Saint of Liars and The Handmaid’s Tale.
I said O M G. This is what they said: “Below, you’ll find 100 titles in which women take creative, inquisitive, constructive and critical postures toward religious traditions: those of their birth: those that belong to others, and which they encounter with an open spirit; those that they work to reform; those that they adopt. No two books are the same. All are vibrant; all hold the potential to illumine.”
https://bookriot.com/100-must-read-books-about-women-religion/
The post Celebrate! Winter Solstice with Christmas in Cornucopia appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
December 8, 2022
The Thread Collectors
Caitlin Hicks
“The era, the landscape, and the people are etched in fine and imaginative detail. The plot has many threads that weave together, making The Thread Collectors a satisfying historical novel.”
“On a March night in New Orleans, Louisana, in 1863, against the backdrop of a city “on the precipice of chaos, barely contained by Union forces occupying the streets,” William whispers farewell to his lover, Stella, in her Creole cottage. He is dressed to run; they exchange talismans, a shell for her and a handkerchief for him. Stella has embroidered a single violet with a thread taken from the bottom of her skirt. Both are slaves of a man named Mason Frye, who is scheduled to return from the Confederate army at any time.
“The next day, using the embroidered “map” that Stella has provided, William arrives at the army camp, the training spot for the new Louisana Native Guards, whose ranks are filling with Black soldiers. William is fit to serve and enlists. His skill: He plays the flute. Here he meets Jacob Kling, a young soldier from New York, also a musician, who has mastered the trumpet and the cornet. The two are quickly united when Jacob, who has loved and played music all his life, hears the excellent notes of William’s flute. They seem destined to serve together and do so as the band at the front of the army that leads the soldiers whenever they go into battle.
“The story alternates back and forth between Jacob and William at Camp Parapet Louisana, and Stella in New Orleans—and through letters from Jacob’s beloved, Lily. In this way, many personal realities of the era are explored; Stella is the concubine of her owner Mason Frye who himself is in the Confederate army; and Lily is a Jew from New York, who crafts quilts, rolls bandages, and attends abolitionist activities for the North. Both women in this way work toward the liberation of slaves. In the midst of this, Frye returns home and reveals movements of the Confederate army, information which Lily uses to create maps of strategic information on scraps of material, hand sewn with precious threads, unravelled from clothing.”
— COMPLETE review posted on New York Journal of Books
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November 24, 2022
A nurse tackles the Cariboo-Chilcotin in 1963
Naïve but adventurous, twenty-two years young and fresh out of university, Public Health Nurse Marion McKinnon accepts an assignment for a four day, multi stop, two-hundred mile trip from Williams Lake to Anahim Lake into the vast Cariboo-Chilcotin country of British Columbia. It’s December and the first snow has fallen across the land. The year is 1963. The weather forecast: twenty-two degrees below freezing.
The view is breathtaking and the roads treacherous.
And what if she gets lost? Or skids into a snowbank? In 1963, Marion is on her own in the wild but beautiful country, deep in winter – no cell phone, no two way radio. Just a chocolate bar and a candle . . . and the enthusiasm of her youth.
Marion Crook’s book ALWAYS PACK A CANDLE held its own on BC’s Bestseller List for one year and won the 2022 Lieutenant-Governor’s Community History Award. Here is a glimpse into the adventures of a frontline worker holding her own and bringing health care to far-flung homesteads, one-room schools and small town residents – decades before developments in modern technology would put her in communication with the world she served.
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November 14, 2022
We may have a cover for KENNEDY GIRL
An uncontrollable series of events transform lives of 2 teenagers the night of RFK #assassination. A black dancer & white singer chase ambulance thru streets of LA. Features ‘unforgettable’ Annie Shea, of award-winning A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE driving up the California coast to refuge in Canada in 1968.
Thank you for voting! We’re almost there!
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November 11, 2022
Road Trip to Canada
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