Rebecca Moll's Blog, page 4

The Outlander by Gil Adamson, A Book Review by Rebecca Moll

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the cover image of this novel defies expectations. A dark horse fleeing in the snow, hooves a blur, background an obliterating white.
A novel of flight. A novel of pursuit. Harrowing, dangerous, life-at-stake flight, the widow/husband-murderer runs for her life, guilt and grief coursing her veins. And the chase is on...
Into the mountains the widow flees, wild is her heart, wild is her world.
Two brothers hell bent on justice dangerously close behind...
Deeply drawing upon the natural world, Gil Adamson draws people, place, and time with illuminating and razor-sharp metaphors, adding depth in a fast-paced, suspense-filled novel that feels as if your feet are flying. Your heart leaps only to race, keeping pace like hoof-falls upon rugged terrain.
Into the mountains you flee, wild is your heart, wild is your world.
And in the wilderness, the widow finds love. Hope whispers in the trees, a cool breeze, a taunting tease. Forgiveness? Redemption?
Set in 1800s Canadian wilderness, a time when women were the weaker sex, the widow earns strength and promise, gaining ground, out-pacing her pursuers, defying her way, a true outlander, a true protagonist.
Twisting and turning this tale pushes the very edges of the page, your heart leaping and cheering for Mary.
Creative and compelling, you’ll need a fast horse for this novel. Strap on your saddle and keep her at a gallop. And the chase is on…


Gil Adamson

Women of the Blue & Gray by Marianne Monson, A Book Review by Rebecca Moll

If you find yourself drawn to those long-forgotten stories of the past, lives that lived, loved, and lost overcoming unparalleled tragedies, not just surviving, but thriving despite the odds, then this is a book for you. True Civil War Stories of Mothers, Medics, Soldiers, and Spies, Marianne Monson not only tells the story, but brings to life those shadows that quietly reside in an amongst vestiges of the past.

And today, we tred among the footprints of their travails, inhale the very air they breathed…

A special thank you to Monson for finding, recording, and sharing what would otherwise be forsaken. An arduous task indeed, countless hours of research and writing, a testimony to integrity, a labor of love.

Arlington National Cemetery, Gettysburg, Antietam, Fort Sumpter. Battlefields, makeshift hospitals, front lines and retreating lines. Pressed upon the soil, bled into the ground, women of the Civil War mothered, nursed, birthed, fought, taught, and grieved, rising to the occasion, day after day, for nothing more than the preservation of liberty, loved ones, hearth and home.

Arranged and presented in a way to add clarity and depth, these stories compliment each other across enemy lines, regardless of northern or southern sentiments, skin color or social station. Every soldier is a son, a babe once nursed, a spouse loved, a father adored, a brother, cousin, friend. And when presented in this light, we remember waging war is easy when compared to peace.

And when the war was over, behind the scenes, without accolades or honor, women of the blue and gray continued on.

“In spite of real tragedy, profound suffering and destruction, these remarkable women found a way to make space for forgiveness – not because their enemies necessarily deserved it but because forgiveness is good for a soul – and good for a nation.”

Women of the Blue & Gray is good for the soul and much like those women we now revere, is good for a nation, too.

Our Happy Time by Gong Ji-Young, A Book Review by Rebecca Moll

Raising more questions than answers, Gong covertly mixes the grey matter of life, the right to life, the will to live, capital punishment, and suicide, blurring lines, confusing convictions, a precipitous, heavy substrate that hangs heavy long after the last page.
Much like the imprint upon the page, black and white, the story begins, gently unfolding, a two-dimensional leading. A death row convict, Yunusu. A victim of violence, Yujeong. One who has nothing. Another who has everything. And a nun who tries to save them all.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
We know the story, predict the ending, justice a taste we well know. Preconceived opinions accompany like carry-on luggage. Yet, as the pages turn, a third dimension adds depth and our luggage is lost.
Still, convictions hold, oppositions entrench, and in-between, a vast stretch of no-man’s land - Golgotha. Yet, deep within the dig of our own making we can see the other side. As the story emulsifies, we crane our necks above the mire and much to our astonishment it is our own reflection with which we war.
Do we have the right to give up on someone? The right to give up on ourselves?
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Love enters the solution, a fourth dimension, and we have the nagging feeling it has been here all along.
God is patient. God is kind.
In the face of death, can love save you?
It has been said, raising the question is the first step to redemption. That forgiveness is a process, not a decision. And that forgiving is not forgetting, but remembering. Put to paper, black and white, these are pleasing postulates. But, what about the mothers of the murdered? The sisters, brothers, husband, wife? Unparalleled dimensions, I cannot begin to understand.
A well-written, seamless story for such a heavy, emotionally-charged issue, the pages turning quickly, so much so, that you find yourself at the end, wondering just when you fell out of solution.
But, maybe, just maybe it is in the grey matter of life, the myriads of mixtures, the Golgotha that divides, that unanswerable questions begin to clarify? Maybe it’s not the answer, but the question that saves us?
But what do I know?
Ask questions, ponder possibilities, struggle with the solution, pray for others.
Until the East Sea runs dry and Mt. Baekdu wears away, God save us…

Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen, A Book Review by Rebecca Moll

History is full of those who conquer and create. Even more so, of self-made men who discovered and forged, leap frogging humanity forward. Today, skyscrapers stand testimony, manmade wonders defiantly curtail nature, exploration and technology lay far reaches of land, sea, and sky at our feet, pushing the future present all because of such formidable individuals. We only have to reach out and touch what’s near to reap the gifts of such fortunes.
Da Chen was one such man; however, Da’s legacy, his gift to mankind, is less tangible and more intrinsic. The human spirit. Born in a “landlord” family, Da Chen’s family suffered through Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, unbearable oppression, cruelty, physical and mental abuse, indelibly marked by those who held party favor and yet, hope still flickered, their dedication to their gods, life and liberty inextinguishable. With this flicker of hope, love and support of his family, friends, and mentors Da scaled mountain after mountain to overcome immense odds. Slipping between the eye of a needle so small with such breath of spirit and determination, defying the laws of nature, he found freedom from bondage and a life where his spirit soared.
Yet, despite the horrors of his childhood, the tragedy of his family’s circumstances, it was his love of country, China’s majestic mountains, roaring rivers, lush valleys, his credit to those who kept the wick aflame, sense of self-depreciating humor and honest reflection that stands testimony to his true spirit, the Colors of the Mountain forever painted upon his heart.
See not with your eyes. Hear not with your ears. Touch not with your fingertips. Yet, feel the Colors of the Mountain and know the true breath of hope flickers within.
Thank you for sharing your story, Da. May your spirit live on.

Thoughts Upon Reading Operating Instructions, A Journal of My Son’s First Year by Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott is like your first cup of coffee in the morning. Eye opening, uplifting, and like the power of that wonderful plant, Coffea, bringing out a much better side of me.
Operating Instructions, written upon the advent of and journey through her son’s first year and her best friend Pammy’s last, is a memoir full of unabashed honesty, blatant humility, triumphs and failures, joy and pain, and the bittersweet rendering, the writing of which, I hope proved cathartic.
If you have yet to read Anne Lamott, add her to the top of your list, then promptly put the book in your purse, your car, upon your nightstand, anywhere where you will reach for it on a daily basis. Any one of her books will do. Operating Instructions is best read in snippets, a small dose every day, spread out over the course of a few months or even a year, to get the full effect over time, for what is a journey without time?
For a mother of three, now adults, I found her account of her son’s first year endearing and refreshing. Anne’s writing holds no pretense, nor does she color in hues to subdue, an in-your-face honesty many find unsettling, but I find refreshing. And although I can’t say I identify will all of her ideologies, I find their honesty worthy of respect. Of course, her humor, natural and just so freaking funny, renders imagery that hits home, Oh funny bone!
If you love children, you’ll love this book. If you’re indifferent or have little experience, go for it. The humor and wit only a first-time mother and gifted writer can pen to paper will lighten your day with laughter and appreciation. If you are expecting your first child, you may want to wait until after the first birthday for a personal perspective, but then again, maybe not. Who has time to read with a one-year-old?
But the take away is more than first time mother’s observations of her son’s first year. It’s about loss, deep aching loss to cancer, good friends and surrogate family, about faith and hope, about each and every day winning the battle against addiction, and most of all, about bearing your soul upon paper and sharing your journey with others. Even when it hurts. Even at the risk of ridicule. This book reminds me we have much to learn from those who oppose, whose lives are of a different hue, have veered left where we stayed right or vice versa. And for this, I am grateful to Anne for sharing.
For the joy of motherhood and the village that surrounds, new lives and lost lives, tears of joy and tears of pain, years of change, Operating Instructions is a must read.

Thoughts upon reading Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott ~Rebecca Moll

Be kind and practice life…

I remember a boy in the fourth grade who was the funniest kid. Doug. He had this way of scrunching up his face, widening his eyes, even dropping a few well-placed words and the whole class fell to fits. Inherently funny, he was, effortlessly so. I only have to conjure his boyish face, stringy arms and legs, and slip slap antics and I feel the laughter bubbling up from my take-myself-too-seriously adult depths.
Anne Lamott hits the spot much like Doug always did. Bullseye. Dead center. And if you are a writer, a title earned by profession or just for the sheer love of the art, spot on is what you need when it comes to writing advice. Few endeavors, other than, perhaps, a tone-deaf soloist on America’s Got Talent, preclude the ability to remain objective like writing fiction. And, few, bear the brunt of lovingly placed well-intended platitudes that delude you into continuing down a road that should have never been traveled in the first place.
This I know. Having worn many hats, a few amply compensated careers, none of which included writing fiction, I can tell you when it comes to creative writing, deep down honest-to-goodness fashioning your own world and all the little people in it, like a god with a big messy ball of clay and only three days left to finish, who spends an eternity on just the wings of a single mosquito, is an endeavor totally inside the brain, closed in the closet, or as Stephen King says, with the door closed. No checks and balances along the way. Just the grand finale prospect of Applause! Applause! or a face full of shame and a heart full of pain.
If you don’t write, let me clue you in…
Sharing your work is akin to birthing to a baby that inherits all the physical characteristics you abhor about yourself, showing that baby off for the very first time, agonizing every second while you hold your breath, your heart in your throat, desperately hoping for coos and woos, not the pinched smiles that say, thank the Lord it’s not my kid!
But, step outside your brain, come out of the closet, and write with the door open and improve you will. So, open the door you must, grit your teeth if you must, and sharpen your pencils ahead of time. On-pointe constructive criticism from a trusted friend, family member, fellow writer will get you half-way there. The other half requires humility. Humor yourself. And on that note, Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in her unabashed totally hilarious way.
Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life is a wonderful go-to book, even if you rarely put pen to paper. For at the crux of the matter of writing and most everything in life is the need to be kind. Kind to yourself. Be kind to others.
“You can either practice being right or practice being kind.” ~Anne Lamott
Even employing the word practice imparts kindness, and understanding that we are all human, we make mistakes, we try again. Like Catholics us “practicing Catholics,” and doctors “practicing medicine.” And in our failings, we identify and connect with others through humility. Of course, one hopes their doctor will find humility somewhere other than the surgical theater and your left, &%$@, I mean, your right knee.
A book to add to your list, Bird by Bird is a keeper. If you write, get a copy. If you don’t write, get a copy. Clear out the closet, open the door, and get outside your brain. Be kind and practice life, one bird at a time.

Gerta by Katerina Tuckova, a Book Review by Rebecca Moll

Break the cycle and come full circle...

Heart-wrenchingly true to the many German-Czech lives branded enemies upon the end of the Nazi regime, this story brings home the adage that hate begets hate and evil, evil. No longer the oppressor, Germans and those of German-Czech descent, even German sympathizers of Czech ethnicity, were suddenly faced with expulsion, torture, and cruelty.
Underlining the baseness of our human condition, the duplicity of victim to victimizer, and the need for revenge before all else, Katerina Tuckova brings home the sufferings of war and reprisal through the life of one young woman, Gerta.
Spilt in two, German father Czech mother, like the very city and country she loves, Gerta, a young mother, witnesses and suffers unspeakable horrors, injustice, and expulsion, surviving by sheer courage and willpower and the promise she will one day return.
Written in the true sense of events, this story needs no embellishment. Lives lived such as Gerta, hundreds, thousands walked the same road, literally, with the few belongings they could carry, figuratively, a journey of lost loved ones, entire families, some, their very lives.
And although a compelling story such as this can tell itself, it takes a special hand to render the tone and tincture it so deserves. Katerina Tuckova brings Gerta to life, her plight and fight with the wide lens it warrants, allowing for both darkness and light, a light that illuminates both sides of the story. War is waged by few, but suffered by many. It spins a vicious cycle. Hate begets hate, evil, evil.
Gerta’s determination to return to life she loved, to protect her only daughter, pushes through time and space to spin a new cycle, where acknowledgement and atonement feed seeds of redemption that nurture the slow process of peace.
Well written, riveting, this story comes full circle over the span of three generations, leaving a legacy that will stay with you long after the last page.

On Music and People...

“Music does bring people together. It allows us to experience the same emotions. People everywhere are the same in heart and spirit. No matter what language we speak, what color we are, the form of our politics or the expression of our love and our faith, music proves we are the same.” – John Denver

HTTPS://JOHNDENVER.COM/ABOUT/PHILANTH...

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro, A Book Review by Rebecca Moll

Ishiguro reminds us in Nocturnes, Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, of how music, woven through our very fibers, coursing our veins, permeating our thoughts, and rising tides of synaptic sympathies adds depth and breadth to our experiences.
Even the cadence of our footfalls brings dimension to a harried life. The cry of a seagull piercing like a soprano reaching her crescendo, the screech of brakes firing adrenaline and flight, the soft lull of a horse’s tail swishing in the high noon heat, the pounding of surf, waves crashing upon the shore. At its most primitive, solace in sound is wired into our very existence.
And we seek its beauty, its escape, its affirmation. We rely on its language where words fail. We dive into its waters when thirsty, lay upon its sunny shores when cold and lonely. Our hearts beat symbiotically, finding harmony.
Ishiguro leaves us with untidied endings, dreams that will always be but dreams, and tragic plateaus, yet throughout the constancy of music ties lives to themselves, to others, to the world around them.
A nice read, woven with drama, humor, irony, and a few measures of despair, this score of stories is written for all, novice to prodigy, virtuoso to maestro. If you have been blessed with the ability to hear, read carefully. Keep your ears open and listen for the rhythms of life.

The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg, A Book Review by Rebecca Moll

Write what you know. Probably the best advice any writer can abide, especially when first venturing into the realm of fiction. Knowledge lends conviction which lends a clarity that cannot be conjured.

However, writing is a passion and sometimes that passion leads to situations where, although we lie on the periphery (and thankfully so in many cases) the very thing that unsettles and unnerves has touched our lives, albeit in a secondary or tertiary fashion.

Family secrets, forbidden conversations, abuse and denial, all things swept under the rug, trod upon day after day, packed down and pressed flat until it becomes the very foundation of family. This is no inanimate thing that lies beneath. Alive and thriving, it waits for someone to pull the rug out from under feet, a hornet’s nest of unimaginable dimensions.

Elizabeth Berg writes about that, which she acknowledges, she does not know. Yet neither does, Laura, the main character, for it is not her, but her sister who has pulled the rug out, a sudden loss that rocks the family, unrests the hornet’s nest. Through this lens, Berg shifts the focus throughout the story as Laura is thrust back through a childhood, mother, father, sister and brother, the memories now a shade darker and heavier, difficult to swallow, impossible to digest. And guilt descends. Laura realizes she, too, held the broom, swept things under the rug, things that at the time, she was too young to understand, too self-absorbed to face.

The broom waits patiently in the corner. Sweep it all back under the rug. Feet to floor, forget it, flatten it out like before. The easy way out is painfully familiar, but the hornets refuse to sleep.

True to life, Berg develops her characters to the reader’s unease. It is not easy to like Laura, or her sister, mother, father, or brother. A cocktail of reasons to love, reasons to hate, the story rings truer than fiction, reminding us of what we have done, what we have failed to do. Blame and righteousness only angers the hornet’s nest.

Yet foundations can be rebuilt with love and support. The hive can be soothed through trust, testimony, and a simple, “I believe you.” The rug can be cleansed and replaced, and the broom burned. And the family continues, a living breathing symbiotic entity that has the passion and potential to transform lives.

An absorbing tale that will leave you with more than your own memories and an appreciation for the complexities of life, love, and all we may never fully understand.