Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi and Half Broke Horses by Jeanette walls

January 2015

Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi 

Trudi Montag is born to a mentally-disturbed woman and a loving father who fought in World War I. The mother immediately rejects her daughter, and continues to do so until Trudi is a toddler, when she suddenly decides to embrace and love her. Trudi has dwarfism, and learns early that she is called a Zwerg, the German word for dwarf, by everyone in the village, and that most people are made uncomfortable by her physical difference. Her father is a librarian of his own pay library in their village of Burgdorf, running the library out of their home and charging patrons to borrow books. Trudi is deeply resentful of her physical difference, but learns to use her uniqueness in a variety of ways to her advantage, mostly to discover the secrets of various villagers, but also to enact vengeance toward others. She discovers various gifts she has, from her own bravery in the face of mass evil to being able to see into people's hearts. By the end of the story, Trudi reflects on the positive relationships she has had and the ways in which she has contributed to her own suffering and that of the others. The young girl soon realizes her impact over others by the end of this novel.

It took me a while to get into this, but when I did WOW - I could not put it down.  The detail she goes into to describe events and people.  I wonder what happened to Max?  I was glad that Trudi finally accepted her body and stopped wanting to be "normal". Life in Germany during the war - seeing how some Germans felt about the atrocities happening and not just to the Jews.  Well worth a read.

Half Broke Horses by Jeanette walls 

A debut novel based on the extraordinary life of Jeannette Walls' maternal grandmother - a sassy, straight-talking heroine for whom saving lives, taming wild horses and beating ranch hands at poker are all in a day's work. Born in 1901 in the rolling grassland of West Texas, at the age of 15, with very little formal education, Lily Casey Smith left home to begin teaching in a frontier town, riding 500 miles on her beloved pony, Patches, all alone, to get to her job. She went on, with her husband, to run an 180,000 acre ranch in Arizona and to raise two children, one of whom is Jeannette's memorable mother, Rosemary Smith Walls. Readers will love and marvel at this intrepid woman, for her fearlessness, her courage, her wicked sense of humour. A true adventurer!

How glad was I to read this book.  What a strong woman Lily was.  Hard work and persistance got her through.  It definitely left me wanting to read more of her Granddaughter's books.