Fiction/ Literature
This is a Hatfield/McCoy feud story. Nonny has been raised by the Fretts but her biological family is the Crabtrees. Nonny's adoptive mother, Stacie is deaf and talented at making dolls heads, her twin sister is extremely reclusive and the older sister of the bunch, Bernese is just plain crazy.
The Crabtrees are as redneck as you come even to owning the rapid and dangerous dogs.
Nonny is the go-between for these two families. She is also somewhat separated from her husband. Henry Crabtree, a decent man is interested in Nonny but sort of gets lost in the shuffle
This book is excellent and Jackson can portray all these various types of women very well but where I feel the story is weak is in the male voices of the story. Henry, Noony's husband and especially Bernese's husband seem to be wimpish and hardly there
First Line: "The war began thirty years, nine months and sevendays ago, when I was deaf and blind, floating silent and serene inside Hazel Crabtree."
Rating: 
(4.0/5)
Adair Colley and her family have managed to escape being pulled in to the Civil War for a few years before the militia comes to her home, arrests her father, tries to find her brother, and when they cannot, set the house on fire. Adair and her sisters leave the house with just a few personal belongings to try and find their father. In to enemy territory, she inquires about her father and instead is denounced as a spy and sent to jail without her sisters. 
Miles is a small town cop whose wife went out for a run and never returned. She was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Miles has had difficulty coping but has to for his 7 year old son, Jonas.
Julie Roseman and Romeo Cacciamani are rival florists who just happen to be in love and in their 60s. Julie's daughter, husband and two children live with her and Romeo lives with his ancient mother and his son and his family. Neither can find a quiet moment to spend together.
In the late 1950s in suburban America, women stayed at home and tended their children and husbands. Brand new houses were built all the same in a cookie-cutter fashion. When Nora Silk moves into one of these neighbourhoods and she has no visible husband and dresses provocatively, she is looked upon with suspicion and ignored. But what happens is the street is turned upside down.
Gillian and Melina Lloyd are identical twins. When Gillian hears her biological clock ticking, she puts herself in the hands of the world-famous Waters Clinic and is artificially inseminated. Melinda, a media escort, convinces Gillian to switch places with her and chauffeur sexy astronaut Chief Hart around town. It turns out to be a fateful decision as Gillian's mutilated body is found the next day.
Leila Jamieson went missing years ago but Mark Murphy, a now retired police detective is still searching for her. Leila's grandmother, Maeve continues to mourn the loss of her granddaughter.
Lord John Grey is back in the second of his series. He is with his brother when a page from his dead father's journal is delivered to him. Grey knew that his father was murdered even though the death was made to look like a suicide, which had people wondering if he was a Jacobite supporter. Grey never questioned that his father was a Jacobite but after receiving the letter and speaking with his brother about it, he starts to question what he knows.
A Year in the World is a traveloque. With her home in Tuscany as a home base,Frances Mayes travels to Portugal, England, Scotland, Turkey, Spain, France and southern Italy.
John Ames believes he is at the end of his life and starts to write a letter/diary to his 7 year old son. His grandfather, a preacher, had moved from Maine to Kansas and joined up with the Union side during the Civil War. His father, also a preacher, on the other hand was a pacifist and became estranged from his father. The grandfather eventually died on his own in the Wilderness.