1. The Ballad of Lucy Whipple -- About a young girl whose family moves to California as part of the gold rush. A well written story that gave a clear sense of place -- like I was there looking around myself.
2. Rodzina -- This was my favorite of the 3 books. The story about the kids on the orphan train just sucked me in and pulled me right along. I loved the author's notes at the end about where to go to find out more information about the actual orphan trains and other examples of similar occurrences. And of course the fact that the main character is Polish and longs for cabbage, beets, and piroshki was not hard for me to relate to.
3. Will Sparrow's Road -- About an English boy in the 1600s whose father indentures him to an innkeeper in exchange for free ale! Similar to the first 2, it is another wild adventure of a child looking for "home".
I also read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath this week. Another work from the "Recommended Classics" list and not what I expected at all. It is about depression from a first person perspective, but not depressing to read. I think it could help people understand mental illness a bit more. The fact that the author committed suicide later in life makes the story at once more compellingly real and also more sad. It is more like a non fiction autobiography in that way. She changed the names, but was writing from her own experiences.
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