Dakota by Gwen Florio narrated by, Caroline Shaffer

Available in House and on Library2Go in audio this review is of the audiobook.

Dakota by Gwen Florio narrated by, Caroline Shaffer 

I should start off by saying that I am a North Dakotan, I live here,  my family lives here, my parents were raised here, so my perspective on this may be different than others.

This was a good mystery and it kept me guessing right up to the reveal. Lola is a reporter who decided to go after a story even though her Montana newspaper and Sheriff boyfriend Charlie tell her not to. She finds herself in the North Dakota Oil patch where the men outnumber the women by a huge percentage and finds herself hip deep in all sorts of trouble. She’s on the hunt for a killer of a young girl and maybe even more girls,  when she puts it together that many women from the Blackfoot Reservation in Magpie, Montana are going to the patch to work and that work ends up being  dancing or prostitution but they are ending up dead, not rich like they were hoping. She takes it upon herself to find the answers and it puts her in danger.

I liked the character of Lola she’s scrappy and fearless, of course that fearlessness gets her in trouble as she dives feet first into a story that is much bigger than she ever expected. I liked this book well enough that I plan to read Florio’s first book Montana and I look forward to reading  more of Lola’s adventure’s especially after the ending of this one I am curious how she will deal with that going forward.

The author also does a good job of respecting the Native Americans while honoring their culture. Also the descriptions of the man camps and the bars near them were pretty spot on.

I wish the narrator, Caroline Shaffer, hadn’t used the movie Fargo to learn a North Dakota accent. The character of Charlotte sounds just like the lady cop on the movie/tv show Fargo, and that annoyed me to no end. Her Native American accents were a little better and the main character was good because she wasn’t from North Dakota. Also The Bakken is pronounced Bahkken (like Bah humbug). It wasn’t that the narrator was bad I liked her narration except when she was doing her Fargo impressions. So I would listen to this new to me narrator again as long as the book wasn’t set in my home state!

This story looks at the gritty underbelly of the Bakken Oil Patch in North Dakota it involves prostitution and human trafficking and it may seem like fiction but unfortunately it is a true consequence of the major influx of people coming to ND to work, the crime rate in ND has gone up considerably and there are a lot of murders and crime on the west end of our state.

One thing that bothered me was, Thor saying this is Dakota, I have never heard anyone from North Dakota call it just Dakota because we need to make the distinction that we are North Dakota Not South Dakota.

3 ½ Stars

I received a copy of this book from the publisher & Librarything however I did end up checking out the audiobook from my library.

Here is a NPR Article Booming Oil Fields May Be Giving SexTrafficking A Boost

And another article from Bakken Today with a response fromSen. Heidi Heitkamp

review crossposted to MissSusie's Reading & Observations

Unfit by Lara Cleveland Torgesen

Unfit by Lara Cleveland Torgesen

Synopsis from Goodreads: Chrissy Rollings has a mountain of troubles to overcome, one that would crush most other girls her age.

She was born in a small North Carolina town in 1952, into a poor but happy and loving family that always managed to scrape by each month... until the night her father died in a car crash, plunging the family into poverty. Chrissy’s mother is forced to take low-paying jobs to supplement her meager welfare checks, leaving Chrissy to raise her five siblings. But even these sacrifices are not enough.

North Carolina was among the states to practice eugenics — forcing sterilization procedures on thousands of people deemed “unfit” to reproduce. When Chrissy’s mother was faced with the choice of having 14-year-old Chrissy sterilized or losing her welfare check, she makes the only choice she feels she can and signs the consent form. That act of survival sets into motion a series of events that shape the course of Chrissy’s life forever.

My Review:

Wow this is something I never knew about and it breaks my heart, this book was fascinating it felt like a true story but was a fictionalized amalgamation of different people, and it worked well, I really came to care about Chrissy.

 I never knew anything about the eugenics program before and was horrified that this happened in our country and how long North Carolina held on to this antiquated practice. If you don’t know what I am talking about eugenics is- forcing sterilization procedures on thousands of people deemed “unfit” to reproduce. And who decided this? People with fancy degrees who thought they knew better than anyone else. Kids who were sent to juvenile hall were sterilized, and girls like Chrissy whose mother was on welfare were threatened if she didn’t have the surgery they would lose their benefits, Chrissy’s mother worked a job but it wasn’t enough to raise all of her children. And yes before you think it Chrissy’s parents were married and had children then her father was killed in a car accident that is when they ended up on welfare.

That Chrissy was ever able to love & marry and have a happy life was a credit to her strength even when she felt she had Unfit tattooed across her forehead most of her life. How awful would that be to be told at the age of 14 that you are unfit?? Especially when Chrissy’s mother dies too and she loses all her brothers and sisters and feels the guilt of being mean to her mother after the surgery and what really bothered me they didn’t sterilize her mother and how could Chrissy not feel anger towards her mother who had signed the papers before Chrissy was even told what would happen to her.

This book grabbed me right away and was hard to put down, it is a fascinating read and well written. My only qualm was I so wanted Chrissy to find her siblings, I wanted them all to be okay and had been raised by loving happy parents but with a book like this the reality is she probably never could find them especially the little ones, but I wanted a happy ending for Chrissy, I wanted to hug her and tell her everything would be okay, so the author did a great job at making me care about the characters in this book. This book is a must read , about an embarrassing and heartbreaking time in North Carolina history.

5 Stars

The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic by Hazel Gaynor

The Girl Who Came Home: A Novel of the Titanic by Hazel Gaynor

Synopsis from Goodreads:

A voyage across the ocean becomes the odyssey of a lifetime for a young Irish woman. . . 

Ireland, 1912 . . .

Fourteen members of a small village set sail on RMS Titanic, hoping to find a better life in America. For seventeen-year-old Maggie Murphy, the journey is bittersweet. Though her future lies in an unknown new place, her heart remains in Ireland with Séamus, the sweetheart she left behind. When disaster strikes, Maggie is one of the few passengers in steerage to survive. Waking up alone in a New York hospital, she vows never to speak of the terror and panic of that fateful night again.

Chicago, 1982 . . .

Adrift after the death of her father, Grace Butler struggles to decide what comes next. When her great-grandmother Maggie shares the painful secret about Titanic that she's harbored for almost a lifetime, the revelation gives Grace new direction—and leads both her and Maggie to unexpected reunions with those they thought lost long ago.

Inspired by true events, The Girl Who Came Home poignantly blends fact and fiction to explore the Titanic tragedy's impact and its lasting repercussions on survivors and their descendants.

My Review:

I thoroughly enjoyed this book; the author did a great job of mixing the Titanic story with the present day story.

I found it fascinating to read about this group of 14 people from one little town of Ballysheen Ireland it was a fictional town (but there was a real town Addergoole that had 14 people on the Titanic and lost 11 people) which made me want to do even more research on them. Also I loved the pictures of the real cables and telegrams from the titanic and the Carpathia interspersed in the book.

Maggie was a great character she was strong willed and a survivor, this book really made you feel how terrifying it was and how lucky it was that anyone at all from 3^rd class survived that awful night. I found it interesting that Maggie had never spoken to her family of her time on the Titanic and it made me wonder how many other survivors never spoke of it again. We all know the story of the titanic and I have read many books on the subject myself but when Maggie is talking to Grace and says she never talked about it because even this many years later she can still hear the screams of the people in the water and as the ship went down, how awful to live with that the rest of your life.

I also enjoyed the love story of Maggie & Seamus, if you follow my reviews you know I’m not much into romance but this love story was so sweet and the way Maggie told the story just made me want them to make it.

Maggie’s granddaughter Grace was so different than Maggie I felt she was weaker because look at what Maggie had been through, when all but herself and one other that were traveling on the titanic were lost to the sea but she went on with her life but Grace loses her father and completely falls apart and gives up everything she loves to take care of her mother but really I felt it was more about Grace herself than taking care of her mother, it was her way to hide.

All the characters on the boat were well written and I really felt the author did a great job of putting you in their shoes, even though you as a reader know what will happen it was still edge of your seat hoping your favorite characters make it to the life boats.

Make sure you read the acknowledgments and the PS to learn more about the real town and where the author got the ideas for this book I found that interesting.

I truly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to any historical fiction fans out there.

4 Stars

I received this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program for a fair and honest review.

Thank-You Miller’s Fresh Foods & New Books

Thank-You Miller’s Fresh Foods & New Books

As most of you know we are remodeling a backroom in the library into a Private Meeting Room for the public to use free of charge. We have raised the money for the remodel itself but are still looking for funds to nicely furnish the room plus pay for some unexpected problems that have come up during this process. We will be having a fundraiser at Miller’s Fresh Foods the first 2 weeks in May, when you get to the checkout you can donate to the library, and donors will have the option of writing their name in a 'book' displayed at checkout. Thank-you so much to Miller’s for supporting the library and I hope everyone is as excited as we are to see the finished room!

New books this week are:

In Adult Fiction:

I've Got You Under My Skin: A Novel by Mary Higgins Clark

Keep Quiet by Lisa Scottoline

Carnal Curiosity (Stone Barrington #29) by Stuart Woods

The Collector by Nora Roberts

NYPD Red 2 (NYPD Red #2) by James Patterson and Marshall Karp

The Chase (Fox and O'Hare #2) by, Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg

The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott

Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler

Missing You by Harlan Coben

Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Anna Quindlen

Clover by Dori Sanders

In Young Adult Fiction:

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green