The Woman with Two Shadows

Finished June 6

The Woman with Two Shadows by Sarah James

This historical novel is set over a few months from 1944 to 1945. Twin sisters Lillian and Eleanor live in New York City with their mother. Their father killed himself when they were very young and their mother has struggled mentally since then. Lillian has taken on the role of head of the family and is a physics student at Columbia University. She has plans to take the test for the Allerton Prize which gives the winner a scholarship to Harvard University where she wants to do her masters degree. This plan depends on Eleanor staying home to live with their mother and care for her. 

Eleanor is an actress, getting roles on Broadway, but she is applying for a part in a new Rodgers and Hammerstein play which will open in Chicago and tour. Eleanor is good at what she does, but this role worries Lillian and she makes some choices that impact both their lives. 

The military has come to the university recently and recruited physics students for a project at a site near Knoxville, Tennessee. The place is called Oak Ridges and since the students find that their deferral is no longer valid, some choose to go rather than enlist. One of them is Max Medelson, and he is not only a fellow student of Lillian's but also the boyfriend of her sister Eleanor. He also claims to be able to tell them apart, when most people cannot. Eleanor changes her plans and decides to go with Max. She gets a job there as well. 

All of these we learn as backstory. Eleanor hasn't written home since she left, and now Max has contacted Lillian with the news that Eleanor is missing and he wants her help. When Lillian gets to Knoxville, she finds things aren't what she expected and she takes on Eleanor's identity to see what she can learn. With tales of others going missing, secret projects that Lillian finds herself getting involved in, and a complicated romance, there is a lot going on.

This novel raises issues of sibling rivalry, what one is willing to do to get what one wants, and the costs that are found to be beyond enduring. An interesting read. 

The Madness of Crowds

Finished February 11

The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny

I always enjoy Penny's books, but this one I could hardly put down. It is the 17th book in the series featuring Armand Gamache. There was so much going on, and she brought in so many issues and bits of history. The novel takes place in the spring of 2022, but was written before then, so it has vaccines working better than they actually did and life more or less returned to normal. That doesn't mean that the pandemic didn't have lasting effects though, and Penny has brought in several issues related to it, including the stress on the healthcare system and the situations that occurred at so many retirement and nursing homes. I think these made it a more emotional read for me as they are still unresolved issues.

She also dug into some historical events around health and government oversight that are particularly troubling, and made them key to the story. This element also brought Reine-Marie in to the story in an active way, helping to uncover some of the historical records from this time. This connected with both characters in the present day, and the question of ethics that runs through the book. 

A lot of the action of the novel takes place in Three Pines, although not all of it. and this means that we see a lot of the residents of the village and learn how they coped with this difficult time. 

Gamache has the responsibility for security for a last minute speaker at a small university. The speaker has controversial ideas and some of the previous speaking arrangements have gone viral, and the event is more chaotic than expected, even with Gamache's preparation. As he digs deeper into the events and the people involved, he finds many people with reasons to react violently. The issues that arise here have a very personal link to Gamache and his family, which reverberate throughout the book. I think this is the book in the series that has both captured me the most thoroughly and haunted me afterward the most. 

Clean Sweep

Finished August 22
Clean Sweep by Michael J. Clark

This mystery novel is set in Winnipeg, around Guiding Light Mission, a mission run by a former convict. Pastor Tommy Bosco found his calling in prison after losing his only son in a drive-by shooting. While everyone knows that Tommy runs the mission, very few know that he also runs a way out of town for those sought after by local criminals syndicates. As the book opens, Paul Noonan is looking for a way out, and Tommy offers it to him. Soon after, a well-known prostitute, Claire Hebert, known as Claire Bear, kills Stephanos, the head of a local syndicate in self defense, and things really go crazy in town. As Claire runs for her life, she draws in friends and acquaintances, including her ex, Tommy. The syndicate has a hit out on her, and several local men are looking for her, from Tommy's dad, Ernie Friday, to The Two Pauls, a couple of men named Paul, each crazy in their own special way, who team up to do jobs.
A local reporter, David Worshuk, of the Winnipeg Sentinel, is also on the trail. And of course the cops are looking for Stephanos killer too. One of the local cops, Miles Sawatski, has been getting payoffs for tips from an unknown source, but he's starting to feel a little weird about that.
This story has elements that reach a long way into the past, and that have a more sinister quality than your usual crimes.
The characters are interesting and complex, from Jasmine Starr, former prostitute now running a sex shop called The Other Woman, to a librarian with a sideline in fake IDs. I enjoyed this story and will be interested in more from this author.

Whisper

Finished June 9
Whisper by Lynette Noni

This teen novel is the first in a series. A woman, known as Jane Doe or Subject Six Eight Four, is being held in a secret facility underground. She has been told only that it is a government facility and that she needs to cooperate with the people working with her.
Her day is routine. Her locked cell is bare, she has no footware, and a basic dress to wear. She meets every day with a therapist, a physical trainer, and a doctor who performs tests on her. She says nothing to anyone. She sits silently with the therapist, does everything the personal trainer asks her to do, and endures the painful experiments in silent stoicism. She has been here for two and a half years, and is still not sure of anything except that they want her to speak, something she is determined not to do. Then one day, her routine is interrupted. After all her normal daily activities have ended, she is taken from her cell to an area of the complex she hasn't been before and she meets with the man in charge. He tells her that they are tired of waiting for something they don't believe will ever happen, and she will work with someone new for the next month, and if nothing comes of it, he implies that she will die.
The woman is surprised to find that her new interaction is with a young man close to her own age, a man who treats her kindly, who offers her comforts, who introduces her to other young people. Her silent stoicism is no longer the effective defense it has been.
When an unexpected situation impels her to speak, she finds that this opens new doors, new opportunities for her. But as things continue, she finds that these people know more about her than she has shared, and may not have been telling her the truth.
A great start to a new and interesting series.

Lilac Girls

Finished June 1
Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly

This book is based on real women in history. It is told around three women, with each of them taking turns in telling her story. One of them is the real-life New York socialite Caroline Ferriday. Caroline had worked as an actress, but by 1939 was acting as a liaison to the French consulate in New York City. Herta Oberheuser was also a real person, a young female German doctor who worked at Ravensbrück concentration camp. The third woman, Kasia Kuzmerick, along with her sister Zusanna, are based on real life women Nina Iwanska and her sister Krystyna, who were both operated on at the camp. The author did a lot of research, looking at letters, diaries, testimonies, and visiting the sites of the story. She includes an author's note that details her work, and where fiction varied from fact.
In the story, Caroline efforts are towards French people in the United States, and orphans homes in France. She tries to locate relatives of people who come into the consulate, and sends clothes, supplies, and money to the orphanages. She has a relationship with a well-known French actor, whose Jewish wife is still back in France, and after the war, when she finds out about a group of Polish women victimized by their Nazi jailors she takes on their case.
Kasia is a teenager in Lublin, Poland. Her older sister Zusanna is trained as a doctor, and their father is head of the postal office. Their mother is of German heritage, but that doesn't matter when Kasia and the other women of the family get caught up in a German sweep of the town and taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp for womn near Furstenberg. A number of the Polish women in her group were subjected to experipents related to sulfa, with doctors injecting their legs with bacteria and foreign agents. The became known as Rabbits, as they often hopped about on their good leg after the operations, and were experimental subjects, like rabbits had often been.
Herta came to Ravensbrück around the same time as the Polish women, and was the only female doctor at the camp. She was put on trial and imprisoned after the war, but was released early and went on to practice medicine afterwards.
As this novel tells the story from these three points of view, we see the motivations, and the blind spots for each of them. I love history and found this a fascinating story of an atrocity of war that I knew little about before.