EFR REVIEWS

MEMORY KEEPER'S DAUGHTER On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this beautifully told story that unfolds over a quarter of a century in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by David Henry's fateful decision that long-ago winter night. ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ It's a snowy, winter night in Kentucky in 1964 when the wife of Dr. David Henry goes into labor. He drives through the unusual amount of snow for the area, event...

SNAKE MOUTH Tina Walton is a poor little girl who has Tourette Syndrome. Unfortunately, Tina is not aware of what is happening to her. She believes that she is behaving badly and will go to hell for her actions. Sadly, her teacher and classmates reiterate the messages that she is a "bad girl" who must be punished. When a natural disaster strikes, resulting part of her village destroyed and some local residents losing their lives, Tina is struck with utter terror, hiding out in the cottage, believing the darkness is actually her being taken to hell. Fortunately, hope is found in friendship: the unusual combination of the wonderful Mrs. Lily and former renegade Kenneth. But can Tina find faith in the God who, for years, she has resented for not protecting her? Amazon.com ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ Young Tina Walton has been given a bad deal in life. She came into this world with what locals call "The Devil's Signature", a birthmark on her leg in a shap...

CHICAGO POEMS Chicago Poems  (1916) was Carl Sandburg's first-published book of verse. Written in the poet's unique, personal idiom, these poems embody a soulfulness, lyric grace, and a love of and compassion for the common man that earned Sandburg a reputation as a "poet of the people." Among the dozens of poems in this collection are such well-known verses as "Chicago," "Fog," "To a Contemporary Bunkshooter," "Who Am I?" and "Under the Harvest Moon," as well as numerous others on themes of war, immigrant life, death, love, loneliness, and the beauty of nature. These early poems reveal the simplicity of style, honesty, and vision that characterized all of Sandburg's work and earned him enormous popularity in the 1920s and '30s and a Pulitzer prize in poetry in 1951. ★ ★ ★ 1/2 In the year 1916, Chicago Poems became Carl Sandburg's first published book of poetry. He went on to relea...

TASTE OF APPLE SEEDS When Iris unexpectedly inherits her grandmother's house in the country, she also inherits the painful memories that live there. Iris gives herself a one-week stay at the old house, after which she'll make a decision: keep it, or sell it. The choice is not so simple, though, for her grandmother's cottage is an enchanting place where currant jam tastes of tears, sparks fly from fingertips, love's embrace makes apple trees blossom, and the darkest family secrets never stay buried, but instead pulsate in the house's nooks and shadows. As Iris moves in and out of the flicker between remembrance and forgetting, she chances upon a forgotten childhood friend who could become more. ★ ★ ★1/2 Iris is informed she's been left the family home in Bootshaven, Germany, after the death of her grandmother, Bertha. Iris decides to give herself one week to live in the house and decide whether to keep or sell the place. Not an easy decision for ou...