I ended up reading 10 books in October- it felt a little long so I am splitting it up into two posts. Here is the first installment.
1- Martha Washington by Patricia Brady
I really enjoyed learning more about Martha Washington. She was a devoted wife and mother. A woman of prayer and faith. Well read. She outlived all 4 of her children, a heartache I can not even imagine. George and Martha later raised two grandchildren as their own, although they never had any children of their own. (All her children being from her first marriage).
During the War she joined her husband every winter at Valley Forge. She also supported him fully through his reluctant presidencies- for the good of our young nation. They had both hoped to retire peacefully to Mount Vernon after America won her independence.
"It was a quiet love story, but a lasting one, not one of those tempestuous romances that blaze up suddenly and just as quickly turn to ashes. Both Martha and George Washington had been in love with others, but once they married in their late twenties, their relationship became a joyful duet that lasted more than four decades."
"For the rest of her life she was a reader, enjoying novels and poetry and pursuing daily the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and the Bible, especially the New Testament. " (p. 48)
"Patsy became a devout member of the Church of England; daily prayers were one of her lifelong emotional supports."
"Martha and George soon settled into a pleasant routine. Both of them got up before dawn for a light breakfast. He then set off on an inspection ride around the estate or perhaps a foxhunt with the neighbors while she read the Bible and prayed before beginning the day's housekeeping chores and sewing." (p. 138)
"General Washington has also just decided to send for his wife, a modest and respectful person, who loves her husband madly."
"In an almost certainly apocryphal (but too good to leave out) story, Martha called the camp's prowling tomcat "Hamilton"."
"Martha has a naturally calm and optimistic outlook on life, but she also worked at maintaining that attitude. As she later wrote, 'I am still determined to be cheerful and to be happy in whatever situation I may be, for I have learnt from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances; we carry the seeds of one, or the other about with us, in our minds, wherever we go.' " (p. 201)
"It was Martha's lifelong habit to spend an hour in the morning over her devotions, praying and reading the New Testament and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (1662). In late 1789, as the old Church of England was reorganized into the Episcopal Church, the prayer book was revised and published a new American version. Martha bought a copy for herself as well as others she sent home to the women of the family in September." (p. 366)
2- Party of Two(The Wedding Date #5) by Jasmine Guillory
3- A Woman Is No Man by Etaf Rum
The story of three generations of Arab women, Fareeda (mother), Isra (daughter-in-law), and Deya (granddaughter/daughter). My heart especially ached for Isra and Adam- their lives could have been so much different if not for the expectations and traditions- I kept hoping their story would turn out differently.
"You have the power to make your life whatever you want it to be, and in order to do that, you have to find the courage to stand up for yourself, even if you’re standing alone.”
"The books kept Isra company. All it took to soothe her worries was to slip inside their pages. In an instant, her world would cease to exist, and another would rush to life. She felt herself come alive, felt something inside her crack open."“The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
4- The Last Train to Key West by Chanel Cleeton
"Then again, it hardly seems worth fretting over. Life happens whether you’re worrying about it or not, and it seems presumptuous to think we have much of a say in how things play out."
"I’m filled with an emotion I haven’t felt in such a long time that I almost don’t recognize it, the taste of it sweet and tangy in my mouth— Hope."
5- Long Bright River by Liz Moore
This book has been showing up in my digital holds since summer and I kept pushing it off- as each time it came in I was engaged in reading something else. This month I finally picked up it. I don't remember why I put it on hold or how I heard about it. I knew absolutely nothing going into it and at first I did not like it at all. That said the story eventually dragged me in and I could not do anything else until I finished it. It is sad and gripping. The story of two sister, Mickey, a cop and Kacey, who is a drug addict and missing. It goes back and forth between "then" and "now".
I was dreading a sad broken ending but could not keep hoping for a happy one...
It's definitely a book and a story that will stick with me.
“I wouldn’t listen. I wanted everything to stay as it was. I was more afraid of the truth than the lie. The truth would change the circumstances of my life. The lie was static. The lie was peaceful. I was happy with the lie.”
