Cheat the Hangman by Gloria Ferris

Published by Imajin Books

I completely immersed myself in this well-written book enjoying every minute. It was definitely deserving of being short-listed for the Crime Writers of Canada "Unhanged Arthur". Gloria Ferris' writing reminded me somewhat of one of my favourite authors, Donna Andrews, especially with the very large quirky extended family interaction and antics. She brings "skeletons in the closet" to a whole new level. Take a decades-old cold case of a missing child, a sudden unexpected inheritance of a huge fabulous and museum-like home to divorced grand-niece Lyris Pembroke, who must then quickly plan and host the annual Pembroke family reunion comprised of about 400 extended family members all too soon after moving into her new home. Throw in a good helping of the paranormal and hidden secrets, a headstone with no name, a fire, attacks on Lyris and you have a pretty good perception of what fun this book is going to be. Lyris definitely has her work cut out for her. Fortunately she has also inherited Conklin the butler, and is able to hire Caroline, an excellent cook and housekeeper. For the reunion, Lyris shows admirable organizational ability as she works her way through what must be done prior to the reunion.

Not all is fun and games, though. There are also some dangerous intruders lurking about, not all of them necessarily human. Or perhaps otherworldly would be a better way to put it. Toss in a small dog with sharp teeth, soon joined by an oversized black cat, and the house begins to fill with more rooms occupied than the residents realize. Spanning so many decades, it would be strange if there were not romances, both current and decades old. Reignited passions, and reawakened love and trust with those who have suffered at the hands of their exes in the past and discover there is still a chance for happiness, even if it comes almost too late. The book is loaded with many different types of chaos and stress and yet it doesn't confuse the reader, it is just all a part of the whole. I loved the balance of the book, I laughed at the shenanigans, shed a few tears as the cold case is dealt with, worried with our heroine, relived the past with the few remaining WWII veterans even enjoying the singing of Vera Lynn in my mind, went through terror, thrills and chills, and loved the ending. This book certainly ran through a gamut of emotions, old and new. I am really looking forward to the further adventures to come.

Conquer All Obstacles by Jo-Anne Vandermeulen

A complicated yet cohesive story that takes the reader through such obstacles as mental health, low self esteem, wrong priorities, abuse, and more. These do not overwhelm the reader by all applying to the same person, but the book most certainly shows us the law of six degrees of separation and how it does or can play out in our lives. The need to be in contact with ourselves and those closest to us is a strong theme.

Jo-Anne Vandermeulen has captured life trapped within the minds of mental health and how very hard it is to see the warning signs in many cases.  She has delved into the core of situations that can affect us adversely or bring such cases to light. Though a novel, it is so close to truth that it could easily be a collection of biographies. The book  is centered around the separate yet somehow closely woven lives of 12 individuals, some with obstacles and some on the outskirts affected by those obstacles of others.

The book is very interesting and suspenseful, and representative of many lost souls who are unable to recognize their own needs. It covers a time period of just 7 months, jam-packed with action and reaction.  This book is not necessarily morose, it does have its lighter, happier moments. It shows how there can be weakness in the strong and strength in the weak.  Powerful and passionate, I think this is a wonderfully written book, it gripped me right away and kept me reading into the night. I am so glad I had an opportunity to read it, and highly recommend it.  A must-read.   5 stars

A Promise of Hope: The Astonishing True Story of a Woman Afflicted With Bipolar Disorder and the Miraculous Treatment That Cured Her

The author: Autumn Stringam. I reviewed this book in 2006 and posted a short version of my full review. Still based on the proof I read than the final publication, I thought this book was worthy of posting the full review:

This book brings the reader inside the mind of a Bi-Polar Disorder patient in her own words. All the chaos, highs, lows, delusions, anger, and deep depression are felt in a way that could not ever be accurately described by anyone who has not lived the story. Autumn Stringam has lived the story. The depth of the urge to suicide is indelibly written. It is told with no holds barred in the still voice that is often seen in trauma victims describing what has happened to them. A distance that makes the story very compelling and true. There is nothing asked of us other than to believe the story and what it means. No requirement to sympathize with the writer for what she has gone through.

We see her life with her mother’s undiagnosed bi-polar swings and final suicide through a child’s eyes, never dreaming that the same terrors would one day be hers. The illness does not surface until she is an adult and married. From this point on, we travel through her own mind, while at the same time she finally begins to understand her mother. The family once again suffers the same fate as her younger brother also is diagnosed. There seems to be nothing to live for because nothing, no treatment yet used, could do more than remove them from a life into a stupor from which they dare not try to emerge.

Her father begins a quest to find a way to help his children in a way that he had not been able to save his wife. All he wants is for them to be safe. A chance meeting with an animal nutritionist eventually leads to trying a new way, a nutritional concoction of vitamins and minerals, based on the formula for quieting aggressive hogs, “tail biters”. Over the next few years we journey through the miraculous recovery of the siblings. Indeed, both now lead healthy and productive lives.

There are agonizing legal battles to get the product approved. The futile fights with the Canadian government are spelled out completely and succinctly and made me want to join in the fight! I can see it exactly as if I had lived it. I would strongly recommend this book for a number of reasons. For understanding of the bi-polar progress, for the discovery and preliminary trials to improve on any new medical discovery, and for how difficult it is to bring government acceptance of alternative medicine for many illnesses, are three main reasons. This is a real life, Autumn lived this life and tells the truth as it is, plain and simple, with suspense as to what will happen with the discovery, and the final outcome. Read it, you will be glad you did.

Annie’s Ghosts by Steve Luxenberg

An amazing chronicle of a quest to discover how a family secret evolved. Part memoir, part history, part mystery and part investigative reporting, this book is a must-read.

It is spring in 1995, and author Steve Luxenberg has just discovered that his mother, who had always said she was an only child, had a sister. This startling discovery intrigues the investigative reporter in him as he begins a trip through memories that takes him into a Jewish history that begins in the Ukraine prior to the Holocaust, moves on to America, into a world of physical and mental disabilities, and into the memories of descendants of his mother’s friends. He manages occasionally to discover some living witnesses to the fact that this newly discovered aunt really existed. This is not only a journey of personal discovery, but a discovery of time and place.

The reader is right with the author as he digs into what histories are available for the time periods, 1920s and 30s for nuances of how disabled persons are perceived with shame as if the parents are responsible somehow for what has gone wrong. Add to that the perceptions of children who are “slow” learners and they are immediately classified as “feeble-minded”. These perceptions allowed them to invariably be classed by the courts as “Insane”, placed into an asylum where records were scanty, and in fact many destroyed. The sheer number of patients deposited into these facilities is completely overwhelming. They were virtual cities! Most patients would not have needed to leave home had the knowledge and treatments of today been available then..

Steve Luxenberg’s journey is emotional and thorough and the reader is a constant companion. This is very much his story of the search for “Annie”, and is very well told. Going back generations to get at the truth is heart-wrenching and yet curious to today’s way of thinking. To anyone who has researched their genealogy, much of the way will be familiar to them, or may even be helpful to them. The book is sure to be an eye-opener to anyone who was born after the 1960s. The writing is exceptional, as are the notes in the version I read. Written with honesty and integrity, with an understanding generated from his findings, I commend Steve for baring this family secret with compassion and dedication. Full of history and a mystery to be solved, I highly recommend this book, in fact I would even go so far as to say it should be in every high school library. Though not classified for young adults, they can benefit and enjoy it as much as I, a grandmother did.

The Sister by Poppy Adams

A debut book. This book is unique, very different from others I've read. I did enjoy it, and it did take me by surprise at the end of the book. To quote the first two lines of the book "It's ten to two in the afternoon and I've been waiting for my little sister, Vivi, since one-thirty. She's finally coming home, at sixty-six years old, after an absence of nearly fifty years." The story ostensibly takes place over 6 days, but is so full of flashbacks that it actually covers over 50 years.

Poppy Adams has put together a story told in the mind and perhaps faulty recollections of Virgina (Ginny), the older of two sisters. Ginny recalls the family as being happy and comfortable, but to her younger sister Vivien (Vivi) it appears the opposite. Ginny & Vivi are quite close until Vivi is serious hurt in a bad fall, which eventually is a catalyst for Vivi to move to London from the village where the family mansion was located. The book is a goldmine for anyone who has the least interest in lepidopterology (the study of moths & butterflies). Clive, the girls' father, is a renowned lepidologist and spends almost all his time involved in this, and trains Ginny to follow in his footsteps. It would appear the only constants in Ginny’s life, real or imagined, are time and moths. The whole story resembles a moth from cocoon to metamorphosis. Her attachment to time appears to me to be more symbolic.

There is something different about Ginny. She seems separated from life, or from living life. She has the ability to escape within herself to avoid learning about life or living in it. Her sister Vivi is the opposite. Ginny appears to be withdrawn, but it is much more than that. For a child witnessing it so young in her father’s lab, perhaps the innate cruelty of studying and experimenting with moths is one of the reasons Ginny does not really develop emotionally. But do we ever really know her? Does she know herself? Throughout most of the book I felt like I understood her “oddities”. The whole family seems to coddle Ginny, especially her mother Maude, who is her refuge. But eventually Maude is no longer able to handle the distancing of her husband and as Ginny gets more involved with her father’s work, she becomes more distant too. Maude is left virtually alone in the huge house as the others spend their time locked away in the lab or out hunting moths. This is a bad turning point for Maude and for Ginny. At this point the feel of the book also changes and the reader begins to realize that they quite possibly don't understand any of the characters. As Maude sinks deeper & deeper into her own nightmare world of depression and alcoholism, the whole family begins to fall apart. I began to think I didn't really know if anyone was as they seemed. Maude's questionable death only adds impetus to the disintegration of all their lives.

At the end of the book I am left with wondering just who was responsible for Maude's death. Everything turns around and I can only speculate. I think the important thing to remember in tying up the loose ends, is that the story is told from Ginny's mind. I think the symbolism is the only way to try to get at the truth. One of the few constants throughout the book is time, a brilliant, Hitchcock-type of background. I almost heard the ticking in the background! I couldn’t garner the answers from Ginny's mind, it functions in a radically different way. I am not even persuaded now in thinking back that she was involved with the research following Clive's demise at all. Even arthritic as she was, her mind tells her that she is a famous lepidopterist, so I can't see her letting the condition of the lab deteriorate to such a degree. She doesn't even seem to have known of its condition yet she was planning on showing her research to the entomologists. This would only make sense if she believed they would never be coming. I felt I was so deep into the mind of Ginny that I began to find it difficult to separate what is true and what is fantasy. Was she as brilliant as we have been led to believe? I don't know. At one point I thought she may have had the savant syndrome with autism, but her brilliance may have been in her own mind. And therein lies the paradox. Perhaps the author intended to leave questions unanswered but hinted at, to keep us trying to put our own slant on what has been happening all along.

The use of one clock in her room at the end of the book is again symbolic, she is in an orderly world and does not have to be connected to anyone, even Helen, who is there but not a threat A well-written book, but not at all easy to describe.