This past week was fairly tame, for the most part, with things speeding up toward the end of it while we prepared for yet another house showing. I think we are on number 14, if you count the one buyer who came to look at the house three times but still didn’t buy it. We are all suffering from a bit of battle fatigue with this house selling thing, as I’ve mentioned several times before (have I whined about this enough yet? Yes, I think so too.). However, we recognize many houses are on the market for months of years before they sell so it could be much worse.
What’s difficult about house showings, as anyone who has sold a house while still living in it knows, is trying to keep the house clean and then leaving it for an hour or so to allow perfect strangers to walk through it and judge you. I’m sure most people truly aren’t judging, but as the homeowner, it can feel that way and that’s the man stress-inducing part of it all.
I actually welcome the requests for the showings, even if we have had a lot in only a couple months, hoping someone makes an offer and buys it, allowing us to move closer to my husband’s job and my parents. I do like our neighbors but we don’t have friends or family up here, making it a rather lonely existence.
I distracted myself from all the weird news this week by going down several rabbit holes on Ancestry.com. I seem to discover something new about my family every time I go on and this past week I found out even more about the people I loosely (very loosely) based ‘A Story to Tell’ and ‘A New Beginning‘ on.
I’ll ramble about that in a blog post later this week when I tell a little bit more about the real story of Blanche and “Hank” (whose actual name was Howard.). What I will say is that Howard, my biological great-grandfather, isn’t looking too good at the moment, but, hey, it was all almost a century ago and I wasn’t there so who knows what really happened. He did seem to be a bit of a cad, however.
The problem with me and Ancestry.com is once I get on there, I can’t stop looking up information, I guess because I’m a storyteller and I want to know the stories of my ancestors. I get way too wrapped up in the digging and I’m sure at some point I’ll get myself in trouble with asking questions like “What was this person or that person really like?” from anyone who might still be alive and knew one of my relatives. It might be better to simply read about them on Ancestry instead.
On the book front: I finally finished a book this week! Okay, so I’ve finished books before but lately, I’ve been reading very slow. This past week I finished the book I talked about last week, Borders of the Heart by Chris Fabry and started a new one by him, Under a Cloudless Sky.
For anyone interested in Borders of the Heart, here is the description on Goodreads:
Desperate to escape haunting memories, J. D. Jessup travels from Nashville to Tucson and volunteers on an organic farm. The hardened landowner has one prevailing rule: If J. D. sees an “illegal,” call the border patrol. But when an early morning ride along the fence line leads him to a beautiful young woman named Maria, near death in the desert, his heart pulls him in another direction. Longing to atone for the choices that drove him to Tucson, J. D. hides her and unleashes a chain of deadly events he could never have imagined. Soon they are running from a killer and fighting for their lives. As secrets of their pasts emerge, J. D. realizes that saving Maria may be the only way to save himself.
The book was definitely fast-paced. I thought a couple of the last chapters were unnecessary in some ways, but it still added to the suspense and I was on the edge of my seat for most of the book.
The description for Under a Cloudless Sky:
A charming and engrossing novel for fans of Southern fiction and the recent hit memoir Hillbilly Elegy about a lush and storied coal-mining town–and the good people who live there–in danger of being destroyed for the sake of profit. Will the truth about the town’s past be its final undoing or its saving grace?
1933. In the mining town of Beulah Mountain, West Virginia, two young girls form an unbreakable bond against the lush Appalachian landscape, coal dust and old hymns filling their lungs and hearts. Despite the polarizing forces of their fathers–one a mine owner, one a disgruntled miner –Ruby and Bean thrive under the tender care of Bean’s mama, blissfully unaware of the rising conflict in town and the coming tragedy that will tear them apart forever.
2004. Hollis Beasley is taking his last stand. Neighbors up and down the hollow have sold their land to Coleman Coal and Energy, but Hollis is determined to hold on to his family legacy on Beulah Mountain. Standing in his way is Buddy Coleman, an upstart mining executive who hopes to revitalize the dying town by increasing coal production and opening the Company Store Museum. He’ll pay homage to the past–even the massacre of 1933–while positioning the company for growth at all costs.
What surprises them all is how their stories will intersect with a feisty octogenarian living hundreds of miles away. When Ruby Handley Freeman’s grown children threaten her independence, she takes a stand of her own and disappears, propelling her on a journey to face a decades-old secret that will change everything for her and those she meets.
I’m not sure if some of my blog readers are familiar with the movie War Room, or not, but if you are, Fabry also wrote the book version of that movie. The screenplay was originally written by the Kendrick Brothers, of course. If you haven’t seen the movie, and you’re a Bible-believing Christian, I highly recommend the movie and the book and I also recommend Fervent: A Woman’s Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer, by Priscilla Shirer, who is also in the movie.
I’m also reading (and hoping to finish this week) The Misadventured Summer of Tumbleweed Thompson by Glenn McCarty, a middle school level book my son read for English, and starting In the Field of Grace by Tessa Afshar.
My son finished Tumbleweed this week and said: “My life feels so empty now that it’s done.” I love to hear that because it means it was a good book and he was completely engrossed in it. I plan to write a separate post about the book later in the week.
My daughter and I are switching between the first Paddington Bear book (rereading it) and
The Cat Who Went Up the Creek because she found out The Cat Who books are about . . . cats. I think she quickly realized most of the books are about the newspaper reporter Jim Qwellerin after the first night because the next night she asked for Paddington again. She’s five and there are more accents I have to do in Paddington, plus Paddington is about a cute bear and his crazy adventures. If I was five, I’d choose Paddington too.
So how about all of you? What have you been doing this past week and what is on your reading list? Let me know in the comments.
With my eyes a little better I’m back to reading a little more and have added The Misadventured Summer of Tumbleweed Thompson by Glen McCarthy, an independently published book for middle school-aged children, to my reading list (again). It is so creatively written and I tried reading it to my daughter since I’m much better at Southern accents than British ones, but she rejected it and asked for Paddington again for her nighttime reading. In case you are interested in finding out a little bit more about the book, here is the blurb on Amazon: For Eugene Appleton, the summer of 1876 in Rattlesnake Junction, Colorado promises to be just as sleepy as the ones before, his only excitement provided by the pulse-pounding Dead-Eye Dan adventure novels he devours. But Eugene’s life takes an unexpected turn with the arrival of Tumbleweed Thompson, a gangly, red-haired boy who spins yarns about whaling voyages in the Atlantic and hidden stashes of gunpowder. Drawn into Tumbleweed’s orbit, Eugene soon finds himself chasing smugglers, firing rifles, and competing for the attention of the lovely Charlotte Scoggins.”
After seeing a preview for Wild Rose at one of the only movies I saw in the theater this year (Brittany Runs a Marathon, which was pretty good, but not my favorite.), I was interested to see it when it popped up on Amazon. The movie is about a young Scottish woman who wants to become a country singer in Nashville but lets her temper and her propensity for alcohol to get in her way. Her other issue is that she is a young, single mother with two children. The movie opens with her being released from jail and returning home where her mother has been raising her children for the last year.
The documentary follows the journey of a couple who starts a diverse farm in a fairly deserted area of California. Under the guidance of a consultant, they not only plant diverse crops but also begin raising various livestock, including sheep and chickens and one fat, pregnant pig. The couple started the farm to give their rescue dog a place to roam and soon learn their family dream will cost them a lot of pain, emotionally, physically and financially. There is a lot of bad (coyotes come to visit; there are other unexpected challenges) but there is also a lot of good (a booming egg business for one).
I like the predictability of the Cat Who books. I don’t always know who committed the crime but I know what the pattern will be to solve it. Qwill’s mustache is going to quiver and hum, alerting him to something that has gone amiss, but he’s still going to walk himself right into something questionable and his cat KoKo is going to help solve the crime with his uncanny ability to feel (and signal Qwill) when something is off. Also, a few women will fall all over the retired crime reporter and he will return some of that affection but he’s going to back away from the woman, choosing instead the comfort of the reserved librarian Polly Duncan from the small town of Pickax.
Last week I watched a quirky movie called Take Me Home and then read a less quirky book named Lead Me Home. Hmmmm…they weren’t connected to each other but they were both about home, which is ironic considering we are in the midst of selling ours. Of course, we can’t really sell a home. Home is, as the saying goes, where the heart is. So we are selling our house and that process has proved to be very stressful and annoying so far. I’ll be writing more about our house selling adventure later in the week.
The neighbor is Noble, an aspiring musician who is tied down to the small town he grew up in because his abusive father left his mom, brother and now it is Nobel’s responsibility to keep the family farm running. Throughout the book, he tries to decide if he wants to pursue a career in country music or stay in the small town and, more importantly, continue to try to rekindle his friendship with Shelby, who he has known since they were children.
