Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello!

Once again it is Friday and time for book club - so I am linking up with Heather at Blonde...Undercover Blonde



This week I read two depressing books... they were interesting but totally not beach reads.


 
First up "The Healing" by Jonathan Odell - here's the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "In Antebellum Mississippi, Granada Satterfield has the mixed fortune to be born on the same day that her plantation mistress's daughter, Becky, dies of cholera. Believing that the newborn possesses some of her daughter's spirit, the Mistress Amanda adopts Granada, dolling her up in Becky's dresses and giving her a special place in the family despite her husband's protests. But when The Master brings a woman named Polly Shine to help quell the debilitating plague that is sweeping through the slave quarters, Granada's life changes. For Polly sees something in the young girl, a spark of "The Healing," and a domestic battle of wills begins, one that will bring the two closer but that will ultimately lead to a great tragedy. And seventy-five years later, Granada, still living on the abandoned plantation long after slavery ended, must revive the buried memories before history repeats itself."

My thoughts: I saw a few reviews that compared this to "The Help", yes it's about race relations in the south but that's about it.  It gives a really "real" look into slave life and the divisions among slaves themselves and the notion of Freedom to those who have been captive for generations.  I thought it would be more about generations of natural healers (and it was in a way).  It was a good book, and interesting.



I also read "The Plum Tree" by Ellen Marie Wiseman.  Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "Bloom where you’re planted,” is the advice Christine Bolz receives from her beloved Oma. But seventeen-year-old domestic Christine knows there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It’s a world she’s begun to glimpse through music, books—and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for.
Yet the future she and Isaac dream of sharing faces greater challenges than their difference in stations. In the fall of 1938, Germany is changing rapidly under Hitler’s regime. Anti-Jewish posters are everywhere, dissenting talk is silenced, and a new law forbids Christine from returning to her job—and from having any relationship with Isaac. In the months and years that follow, Christine will confront the Gestapo’s wrath and the horrors of Dachau, desperate to be with the man she loves, to survive—and finally, to speak out.
Set against the backdrop of the German home front, this is an unforgettable novel of courage and resolve, of the inhumanity of war, and the heartbreak and hope left in its wake."

My thoughts: It was very interesting to read about the Holocaust from the standpoint of the Germans that were living in small towns and being watched and terrorized by the military.  In an age when we have so much technology and are able to rapidly share information it makes you realize how hard a war like this would be on families with little way to know what was going on and if their loved ones were ok.  Again it was good, and kept my interest.

Until next week!

Jasmine