Review and Giveaway: The Lace Makers of Glenmara by Heather Barbieri

Life has seemed to be all about heartbreak lately for Kate Robinson. First the death of her mother, then the painful breakup with her boyfriend and finally the demise of her fashion line...they all conspire to make her want to escape. She and her Mom had long planned a trip to Ireland, a trip her Mom was not able to make but she encouraged Kate to take on her own. That is how she finds herself backpacking alone down a lonely Irish country lane, drenched to the skin with the constant rain.

Stumbling into the small coastal town of Glenmara, Kate encounters in insulated group of villagers in the midst of a small festival. Widowed Bernie and her lifelong friend Aileen are manning the lace booth, selling the items their circle of friends have created. Kate is captivated by the lovely lace pieces...they remind her of her mother, who taught her to sew.

Bernie takes one look at bedraggled Kate and invites her to stay. Kate's presence in the village affects people in different ways, some are thrilled to have someone new around, others resent the intrusion. When she joins the circle of lace makers, Kate is inspired by the idea of adding Irish lace to the ladies' bras and underwear. What starts as a way to inject something beautiful and positive into the lives of the women, who all have had problems and challenges, ends up becoming a business opportunity that is much needed in the village and in Kate's life, too. Unfortunately, not everyone is thrilled about this new venture. There will be obstacles to overcome and problems to solve before they can look into that promising future.

Heather Barbieri

In this lovely novel the author deftly crafts a touching story about women, friendship and life. She beautifully tells what binds them together, the threads and stitching that make up ordinary lives...sometimes embroidering them into the extraordinary and sometimes tearing them apart. If you are looking for a great summer read that will take you away, don't miss The Lace Makers of Glenmara.

The Lace Makers of Glenmara is published by Harper Perennial, ISBN 978-0-06-177246-7. For more information about Heather Barbieri and her books, please visit her website. I received this book as part of a TLC Book Tour (thanks Trish & Lisa, you ladies are the best!!), for a complete list of tour stops, click here.

I have two paperback copies of this book to give away! One is an advanced reading copy, the other is the trade paperback, gently read. Winners must have a US or Canada mailing address. To enter just leave me a comment here that includes your email address. This giveaway will be open until midnight eastern time on July 26. If you would like an extra entry you can follow any way you like (Google, Feedburner, email, etc) or tweet the giveaway on Twitter. Please leave me a comment to let me know that you did--if you already follow, that counts too, just let me know in your comment. Thank you all so much for visiting and entering. Good luck!

Review & Blog Tour: Now & Then by Jacqueline Sheehan

After surviving three painful miscarriages and a devastating divorce, Anna O'Shea has given up her draining law practice and tried to put the scattered pieces of her life back together. A trip with a girlfriend to the British Isles is part of her healing process, including a quick one day stopover in Ireland on the way home. They have time to visit just one castle. As she is leaving, Anna meets an elderly Irish woman who says that she has been waiting for her. She gives Anna a small wrapped package, which gets tossed unopened into her luggage.

And there the package lies, forgotten. Once home in Massachusetts, Anna falls into a jet lagged sleep, only to be awoken abruptly by the telephone. Her mother is calling to tell her that her only sibling, her brother Patrick, has been in a horrible car accident. He was on his way to New Jersey to pick up his son, Anna's sixteen year old nephew Joseph, who had been arrested.

Eventually Anna is the one who springs the boy from jail. She has always tried to be there for Joseph, just as she always tried to be there for Patrick. She knows first hand the awful pain of child whose father is given to sudden rage. Her father had been volatile and she can see the same trait repeated in her brother.

They arrive home late, too late to visit the hospital. During the night, Joseph has a dream that sends him, almost still dreaming, out to the living room to go through his aunt's baggage. Just as he picks up the mysterious package from Ireland, Anna walks in and assumes the worst. As she angrily grabs at what he holds in his hands, both are sucked into a violent vortex and pulled apart...

When Anna awakens she is on a cold beach, battered and bloody, with a serious wound in her leg. Joseph is nowhere to be found, though she searches with the last of her strength. The people who find her and save her life are kind and generous with what little they have. But as she heals, she begins to realize that she is not in 2009. It is a shock to learn that it is the year 1844 and she is in Ireland. The Ireland of her own ancestors.

At first she is so weak and sick, it takes weeks to recover the strength just to walk. Her focus every day is to find a way to locate Joseph and figure out a way to get back to their own time. But it is impossible not to become entwined in the lives of the Irish people and it is a constant struggle for Anna to maintain a plausible story and refrain from mentioning anything that might color future events. She has no way of knowing if their very presence in the past will change their own future.

Time travel books have a special place in my heart and I am always drawn to them. I remember reading Ray Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder" as a teenager, I think that is where it started. Next came the fantastic novel Time and Again by Jack Finney and I was a convert. Since then, I have been fascinated by the process and the possibilities...or maybe I should say possible repercussions. I liked that Ms. Sheehan's mode of time travel was a dangerous, bloody business. It seems so much more plausible than the fall asleep in one time, wake up in another that is usually used in novels. She even mentions string theory (my Dad would love that)! She knits together the lives of the characters in a subtle but magical way, and presents them with enough drama to draw in any reader. This is an absorbing story that I truly enjoyed.

For more information about Jacqueline Sheehan and her books, please visit her website.

I received this book as part of the TLC Book Tour. For a complete list of tour stops, click here.

Now & Then is published by Avon, ISBN 978-0-06-154778-2

Review: Galway Bay by Mary Pat Kelly

At sunrise on June 23, 1839, her sister Maire's wedding day, Honora Keeley stands on the Silver Strand of Galway Bay and gazes out. The Bay is her home and her family's livelihood since her father is a fisherman in the village of Bearna. She is sixteen years old and pledged to the church. She will join the convent as a novice nun in a few months, a great honor to so poor an Irish family as the Keeleys.

But that morning will change the course of Honora's life. Out of the sea, fresh from an early swim, walks a beautiful young man, tall, dark haired. Michael Kelly. Within the space of an hour there is no going back, fate has brought them together and they are determined to be married.

There are obstacles. Michael is not a fisherman, has no land or money. But, despite the problems, they are wed and they are happy. Maire is not, she is quickly widowed and then is forced to become a servant to a tyrant landlord. She is the one bleak spot in the otherwise happy life of the Kellys. They have a small farm at the top of a hill overlooking the Bay and, though the work is hard and the rent high, they manage to feed their growing family and find joy together.

"I was used to the give-and-take of a large family, where one broke in on the other, splintering sentences, bouncing thought away from meaning. But Michael and I listened to each other, each waiting as the other found words for what we'd never said before, never even thought before, giving shape to dreams and to fears. I'd no idea I was such a worrier - the ifs and buts that flowed out of me. Michael teased them away."

And then the unthinkable happens. In 1845 the potato harvest, the staple of the Irish peasant diet, is blighted and rots in the ground. The hunger and suffering that winter is terrible. When the potato crop fails two out of the following three years, the result is millions of deaths. The landlords and the British rulers do not care and attempts to help are mired down in bureaucracy and are ineffectual.

Honora watches her children starve, her neighbors die, and she dreams of finding the means to escape, to buy passage to another place where her family can live and grow: America. She is far from the only one, the ships are filled with Irish immigrants trying to find a better life. The voyage is dangerous and many die before they even reach North America. But some make it and they send back the means for the next one to escape. An entire race of people, trying to rescue each other.

She does escape, with her family and Maire's. Not without losses and terrible grief, but Honora has strength of spirit, strength of character, strength of will to sustain her loved ones and find a place where they can prosper.

All great historical fiction is rooted in fact and Galway Bay is no exception. Mary Pat Kelly is the great-great-granddaughter of Honora Keeley Kelly. The author has followed the great Irish storytelling tradition and created this fictionalized account of her own ancestors, an epic saga of one family's journey through one of the darkest hours in human history. It is a story of faith, of family lore and ancient tales, of great suffering and the triumph of the human spirit.

I am, as so many Americans must be today, part Irish. This book brings home the terrible destruction of the Great Hunger in a way that has never been clear to me before. Because it is personal story, one family's struggle that could be any family from that place and that time. Fiction, maybe, but with the weight of truth behind it.

Read Mary Pat Kelly's inspiring letter, visit her blog and her website. There you will find more about this book, plus information and inspiration for looking into your own family story, your ancestry.

Please join us at 11 AM Eastern Time on Tuesday, March 17th for a live St. Patrick's Day interview with Mary Pat Kelly on Blog Talk Radio!

See what everyone else on the blog tour thought about Galway Bay:

http://2kidsandtiredbooks.blogspot.com/

http://athomewithbooks.blogspot.com/

http://book-thirty.blogspot.com/

http://readersrespite.blogspot.com/

http://www.myfriendamysblog.com/

http://bermudaonion.wordpress.com/

http://www.acircleofbooks.blogspot.com/

http://www.corinnesbookreviews.blogspot.com/

http://lorisbookden.blogspot.com/

http://www.bookthoughtsbylisa.blogspot.com/

http://teddyrose.blogspot.com/

http://libraryqueue.blogspot.com/

http://allisonsatticblog.blogspot.com/

http://cherylsbooknook.blogspot.com/

http://luanne-abookwormsworld.blogspot.com/

http://bookingmama.blogspot.com/

http://enroutetolife.blogspot.com/

http://www.marjoleinbookblog.blogspot.com/

http://peekingbetweenthepages.blogspot.com/

http://cafeofdreams.blogspot.com/

http://jennsbookshelf.blogspot.com/

http://thebookczar.blogspot.com/

http://www.writeforareader.edublogs.org/

http://linussblanket.com/

http://booksbytjbaff.blogspot.com/

http://www.caribousmom.com/

http://hiddenplace.wordpress.com/

http://www.chikune.com/blog

http://librarygirlreads.blogspot.com/

http://diaryofaneccentric.blogspot.com/

http://savvyverseandwit.blogspot.com/

http://www.kayespenguinposts.blogspot.com/

http://writebyfaith.blogspot.com/

http://www.frommipov.blogspot.com/

http://booksiesblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.bookbargainsandpreviews.com/reviews/history/galwaybay.htm

http://wendisbookcorner.blogspot.com/

http://www.thisbookforfree.com/

http://abookbloggersdiary.blogspot.com/

Review: Heir to Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier

"It was best to keep on the good side of the Fair Folk, whatever one's opinion of them. The forest of Sevenwaters was as much their home as it was ours. Long ago, our family had been entrusted with the task of keeping the place safe for them. This was one of the last refuges of the ancient races anywhere in Erin, for the great forests were being felled for grazing and the Christian religion had spread widely, displacing druids and wise women. The old faith was practiced only in the most protected and secret pockets of the land. Sevenwaters was one of those."

In ancient Ireland there came a time when the fairy folk, the Old Ones, could no longer inhabit the land. Clodagh's family have protected the forest of Sevenwaters for generations, it is one of the last refuges for the Fair Folk and there has always been an fragile peace. Clodagh is one of six daughters and at long, long last the baby boy that has been so hoped for is born to her parents.

Baby Finbar is only a few days old when he disappears and a doll made of twigs is left in his place. To Clodagh's dismay, she can see that the twig-baby is alive. She can see it breathe and move and hear its hungry cries. No one else can see this, only Clodagh, and she cannot bear to see the little stick baby die. It seems to her that the Fair Folk must want an exchange. While her father and his men search for a missing man that they suspect in the kidnapping, she packs a bag and the twig-baby and sets out to find her tiny brother.

Before long Clodagh meets the fugitive that her farther is looking for, Cathal, in the forest. He claims not to know anything about the baby's disappearance and Clodagh desperately wants to trust him. He becomes her companion in a quest that will require every ounce of their strength and courage if they are going to venture into the fairy realm and return home once again.

Juliet Marillier is one of my favorite authors. She takes ancient folklore tales from Ireland and Britain and breathes life into them. Her books are full of complex and interesting characters who always have a quest or task to complete or a mission to fulfill. The old landscapes and fairy realms are vividly described. This one is no exception. I'm always anxiously awaiting her latest book and have never been disappointed, they are wonderful.

This is the fourth book she has written about Sevenwaters but it is not necessary to have read the others before reading this one. Earlier characters do occur, but only peripherally, and this story stands easily on its own. If you like historical fiction with a little bit of magic thrown in, give these a try!

Visit Juliet Marillier's website here.

Heir to Sevenwaters is published by Roc. ISBN 978-0-451-46233-6

Order Heir to Sevenwaters from Amazon

BUY BOOKS FOR THE HOLIDAYS