April Highlights and book of the week: Golden Poppies

I did a thing! I found it a lot more fun creating the content then editing it, though. This technical stuff gave me a right headache! So, for the rest of the day I decided dark and quiet it will be (and it sort of worked considering we do still have a 4-year-old in the house). 

So the book of the week. I got it with a batch of others like a month ago or so and didn't realize, or forgot, rather, that it is the most recent part of a narrative (that has 2 books before it) of 2 families connected through history. The first book showcases the complex relationship of Mattie, a young enslaved wetnurse, and her charge, Lisbeth. The second book sees them returning to the place they met after both escaping in their own way, Mattie to free family, and Lisbeth summoned by the death of her father (the plantation owner). This narrative adds Mattie's young fresh-faced 19-year-old daughter Jordan in the mix and further examins and expands the complex relationship between the families and their lives. The third book starts with the death of Mattie, and again, the journey of how these 2 families are intertwined. Lisbet and Jordan have lived lives by this point, loved and lost husbands and raised a family, and are in the thick of doting on their grandchildren. The narrative in this story is through Sadie,  Lisbeth's daughter, and Jordan. One doesn't need to read the first 2 books to get the feel of the complex relationship between these families and the author does a good job of weaving the story through the lens of humanity, as humans look back and forward while living in the present, so does this tale. It takes place in the 1890s (or thereabouts) so the civil war is done and dusted ...and the laws of today are being...haggled. Jordan struggles with her lost faith and her outlook on the future. Sadie struggles with her sense of self and duty between the family she was charmed into creating and the family she came from. The side characters the reader meets are important for the tone of the story. Samuel is Sadie's brother and married a Greek woman, Sadie married a German man, (I was wondering why he was so...intense when we first "meet" him but he ends up being part of the "bad guys" by the end of the book so I suppose that could be why). One also meets Naomi and her relationship with a man passing himself off as white (and Jordan's struggle to accept her daughter's choice). TRIGGER WARNINGS are present throughout the book from talk and description of historical facts and action of present abuse! She ends the tale as more of a life chapter ending. They finished or come to terms with a conclusion of decisions they and/or others made. While it has an ending, it is soft and can very easily be picked up into a new book/storyline (I am not sure whether she plans to continue this family saga or not) if she wanted to.



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