Another Heartbeat in the House

Finished November 13

Another Heartbeat in the House by Kate Beaufoy

From the cover I thought this might be historical romance with a touch of mystery, but it was something with more depth than I expected. It is historical fiction, but deals with two time periods. The framing time period is late 1936 and early 1937. Here, Edie Chadwick is the main character, a young woman who works in publishing. This year had two tragedies for Edie, the death of her beloved dog and the rift in a long and close friendship with her friend Hilly. It is New Year's Eve as the book begins, and Edie is visited by another close friend, Ian Fleming, who she has known since she was a child. Yes, he is that Ian Fleming, but is a minor character here. After a couple of drinks in her flat, Ian convinces her to join him at a party he has been invited to. There, she runs into a distant relative, "uncle" Jack Frobisher and the conversation goes to a house he owns in Ireland. He and his family don't use it anymore and he needs someone to go over and shut the place up before selling it. 

After another tragic incident in Edie's life happens, she decides to take up Jack's offer and go to Ireland. She will be going through all the contents of the house, deciding what should go to auction and what should be kept or thrown away. She also plans to bring some of her copy-editing work so she doesn't fall too far behind. Ian shows up just before her train leaves and thrusts a dog on her, a Maltese with a pedigree. I love the way that she and the puppy have conversations over the course of the novel. 

In Ireland, she discovers handwritten pages in the attic, written by a woman who lived in the house in the 1840s, and that tell her story. She is a woman with ambition, one who intends to find a way to make a comfortable life for herself, but her plans find themselves getting more complicated than she intended and her life takes a different turn. The woman's name is Eliza Drury and she turns out to have a literary acquaintance that is someone who wrote a book considered a classic. As Edie learns more about Eliza, and the house itself, she finds herself learning about Ireland's history, the making of a novel, and about a woman who led a fascinating life. 

I found this novel engrossing in many ways, and enjoyed it immensely. 

The Garden of Eden

Finished August 31

The Garden of Eden by Sharon Butala

This book takes place mostly in 1993, with the character Lannie having experiences as early as 1984. This is when Lannie arrived as a volunteer in Ethiopia. She was deeply affected by the news of Ethiopian famine and was determined to find a way to help there. Without medical or other specialized training, she found a church willing to send her for her reporting on what was happening. Lannie makes herself useful in whatever way she can, picking up knowledge as she goes. 

When she was a young child, she was dumped on her uncle Barney and aunt Iris by her father, Howard, Barney's older half-brother following the death of her mother. Her younger siblings, Dillon and Misty, were left with another relative in Calgary.

Lannie had lived in Chinook, Saskatchewan, and her aunt and uncle had a farm just outside town. Despite the love they had for her, Lannie always felt out of place. 

In 1993 in Chinook, Iris is spurred to leave the town to search for Lannie who has been gone for a decade, with letters petering out soon after she left. The impetus to search for Lannie is a sudden, unexpected loss of her own. Iris thinks about her own ties to the land, living on the farm that her mother and grandmother lived on before her. She has often thought about the indigenous people who lived there before them, protecting the signs they left behind, and spending time in the remaining wild coulee that is part of her property.

The book is separated into three sections: Seeding, Growing, and Harvesting, and there are overarching themes of drought, and land use and conservation.

Both women are also searching for love and belonging, and both have dreams that take them into the past and the future. They also feel a sense of a woman guiding them in these dreams. 

I really enjoyed seeing their experiences, even the difficult ones, and seeing them grow as they realized that their strength was within them, and they needed to love themselves first. A moving story that shows the commonalities across cultures.