Polar Opposites

Finished August 10

Polar Opposites by Barbara Kellyn

This novella is one I picked up to meet a reading challenge and because it has a Canadian setting, Churchill, Manitoba. American magazine journalist Zora Dunn has been struggling with life in general and with writing since the death of her father a couple of months earlier. Her editor sends her to Churchill to do a story on polar bears, the disappearing sea ice, and how the community is adjusting to climate change. Zora has done a lot of research, but her intention is to see the situation for herself and to talk to locals about how they see things and how their lives are impacted.

She has been paired with a Canadian freelance photographer, Luke MacNeil. He has a great reputation as a photographer, but has an abrasive attitude and seems to enjoy getting under Zora's skin. For example, when she introduces herself to him, she says that her friends call her Zee, but he responds by calling her Zed, a reference to how Canadians say the alphabet, but also disrespectful. 

Luke is also facing a health issue that will impact his ability to do his job, and is dreading this loss. The job has brought them together, but how they react to each other and treat the people they interact with will impact the article overall.

I enjoyed the witty banter, but found that the novella format limited the character depth. There were a lot of local characters that seemed interesting that I would have wanted to learn more about. I also wanted more information on the issue that Zora was writing about included. 

Can't Help Faking in Love

Finished May 18

Can't Help Faking in Love by Swati Hegde

This contemporary romance novel takes us to India. Harsha Godbole is the child of wealthy parents and niece to a major Bollywood producer, but she never felt close emotionally with her parents. After getting her degree in the United States, Harsha decided to settle in Bangalore rather than her parents' city of Mumbai, and make a living as a photographer. She also decided to leave her trust account untouched and only live off what she made. She goes to Sunstag Café every day for a special drink and to do some work. Her apartment is small and not a place she wants to spend more time in than necessary. She did have a boyfriend from a similar wealthy background, but he has recently dumped her to marry someone his parents chose. There are a couple of family events coming up that she will attend: her aunt and uncle's 25th anniversary party and her cousin Nela's wedding. When she meets Nela and her fiancé by chance one night, she spontaneously introduces Veer Kannan as her boyfriend. Veer is actually a barista as Sunstag who she has a friendly relationship with.

Veer has helped support his family all his life after his father walked out when he was a child. He did go to acting school and worked in Mumbai for a while, even getting a job on a pilot show, but it wasn't picked up. Now he is working to help his mom and his younger brother Arjun. Arjun was accepted into a good business school, but they have cancelled his scholarship without warning and Veer is trying to figure out a way to come up with the tuition money in just a few days. 

So when Harsha asks him to pose as her boyfriend through the next few weeks, offering to pay him, the amount he asks for matches the tuition need. Harsha must use her trust money to pay him, but thinks it is worth it. They agree on a plan of payments and begins spending time together to get to know each other and feel comfortable interacting with each other.

As they grow closer and get to know each other, they also begin to learn more about each other's lives and feelings and the chemistry between them has time to work on them. They learn each other's vulnerabilities and find themselves becoming champions for each other in ways that feel real.

I liked the way the culture was shown without being focused on in a purposeful way. We learn about food, about social worlds, and about their family dynamics. 

Picture Perfect Autumn

Finished March 31

Picture Perfect Autumn by Shelley Noble

This contemporary romance was an enjoyable read. The main character, Dani Campbell, is one of the hottest new photographers on the New York scene, but she is insecure and feels that something is missing from her work. On a visit to a thrift store for inspiration, she comes across an envelope of photographs and is determined to track down the photographer. He is Lawrence Sinclair, an 80-year-old reclusive man who lives alone in a run down Rhode Island beach house. 

Dani is insistent on getting him to mentor her and she makes assumptions based on what she sees of his life. She agrees to pay him rent to stay at the house and also agrees to do chores for him in exchange for his mentorship. She really puts her heart into it, bringing the house back to life. She also gets drawn into the local community, particularly getting involved in a local art school run by three aging nuns. Her life in Rhode Island is juxtaposed by her New York persona, where she dresses for attention and mingles with the wealthy. Her agent is supportive but also demanding and there are things happening in New York that she can't opt out of, including a show and a potential sponsorship opportunity. 

Lawrence is still grieving the losses of his life: his wife, his son, and his relationship with his grandson Peter who he was close to before his son's death. Lawrence isn't poor, although the way he lives gives this impression. Peter has recently joined the family business, something he was pressured into by his mother. This is not the type of law he wants to practice and he resents the situation he is in. He also misses his grandfather and their previous relationship.

When Peter's mom pressures him to visit his grandfather, Dani misrepresents herself as Lawrence's housekeeper, while Peter's mother is looking for signs of his loss of capability to function on his own. 

This is an interesting study of the three main characters. Dani, successful but insecure; Peter, successful, but unhappy; and Lawrence, caught in the past until the present insists on his presence. 

I liked the characters and the plot, and found the themes covered here meaningful to me. 

A Chance Meeting

Finished February 23

A Chance Meeting: American Encounters by Rachel Cohen

I received this book as part of a subscription from the New York Review Books. It was an interesting read, and I think you could read the sections that interested you most, rather than the whole thing in order. The only issue with doing that would be the background she gives the first time you encounter one of the subjects of her writing. There are many people who appear more than once as they 'encounter' someone else, but the background is given more deeply during the first time they appear, which is actually great if you are reading in order, because you would end up being bored by the repetition otherwise. 

The forward by Vijay Seshadri is insightful and helps place this work in context. 

There are many interesting people covered in the thirty-six encounters here, and I learned a lot about even the ones that I was already familiar with. She includes writers, editors, photographers, artists, critics, and entertainers. Here is a list of the encounters:

1. Henry James and Mathew Brady

2. William Dean Howells and Annie Adams Fields and Walt Whitman

3. Mathew Brady and Ulysses S. Grant

4. William Dean Howells and Henry James

5. Walt Whitman and Mathew Brady

6. Mark Twain and William Dean Howells

7. Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant

8. W.E.B. Du Bois and William James

9. Gertrude Stein and William James

10. Henry James and Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett

11. Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz

12. Willa Cather and Mark Twain

13. Willa Cather and Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett

14. Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Stein

15. Carl Van Vechten and Gertrude Stein

16. Marcel Duchamp and Alfred Stieglitz

17. Willa Cather and Edward Steichen and Katherine Anne Porter

18. Alfred Stieglitz and Hart Crane

19. Hart Crane and Charlie Chaplin

20. Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston

21. Beauford Delaney and W.E.B. Du Bois

22. Hart Crane and Katherine Anne Porter

23. Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore

24. Zora Neale Hurston and Carl Van Vechten

25. Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp

26. Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin

27. Joseph Cornell and Marianne Moore

28. James Baldwin and Norman Mailer

29. Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop

30. John Cage and Richard Avedon

31. W.E.B. Du Bois and Charlie Chaplin

32. Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten and Richard Avedon

33. Richard Avedon and James Baldwin

34. Marianne Moore and Norman Mailer

35. John Cage and Marcel Duchamp

36. Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell

Akin

Finished September 7

Akin by Emma Donoghue

This heartwarming story is narrated by Noah, a retired chemistry professor. He has just retired in anticipation of his eightieth birthday. He has survived the loss of his parents, his wife, and most recently, his little sister Fernande. It was Fernande who helped him through his previous losses, sorting through the belongings and organizing things, so her loss is even more deeply felt. 

He has some money set aside and decided to use it to travel back to Nice, France, where he was born. His mother Margot had stayed there with her father, a well-known photographer, while her husband travelled ahead to New York. Then the war started, and when things were getting more difficult in 1942 she sent Noah (then Noe) to America. He has some memories of the city, their apartment, and his grandfather, and wants to visit the city and his grandfather's grave. 

Just days before he is due to leave, he is contacted by a social worker looking to place his grand-nephew, Michael, Fernande's grandson, with him on a temporary basis. Noah had known of the child, but his nephew Victor, Michael's father had been troubled and the family had only had sporadic contact with him. When he finds out that Victor has died, Michael's mother Amber is incarcerated, and his maternal grandmother who he had been living with has also just died, he realizes that he can't turn his back on the boy. That means that he will also take the boy with him on his trip. 

Michael is eleven, streetwise, and good at putting up a tough front, but he misses his parents and grandmother, and is worried about his situation. As the two get used to each other, Noah shows empathy and understanding and tries to respect Michael as a person, while Michael gets exposed to many new experiences. 

As they collaborate to figure out why Noah's mother kept several photographs from her years in Nice during the war, they find themselves learning together as well as from each other. 

This is a story that really draws you in, caring about both these characters as well as the minor characters that are in their lives. I really enjoyed how Noah had conversations with his late wife Joan in his head that felt very real, and added depth. 

Mary Coin

Finished August 31

Mary Coin by Marisa Silver

This novel was inspired by the cover picture. Taken by Dorothea Lange, and called Migrant Mother, the photograph of Florence Owens Thompson became famous and opened many doors for Lange. The author creates a fictional woman, Mary Coin, as the subject of this photo and the novel follows Mary from her childhood through her marriage, her travels in search of employment, up until the moment of the photograph. It also follows the photographer, here named Vera Dare Everett, as she too marries, has children, and tries to create her own career through her art. 

Staying relatively closely to the real facts of the women's lives, Silver brings them to life by letting us see inside their thoughts, their motivations, and their drive to live as they want, as they must. She tells the larger story of the Depression in America and the desperate search for jobs to feed oneself and one's family, from a uniquely female viewpoint.

Tying it all together is a man in the current day, an anthropology professor named Walker Dodge. Walker's specialty is the study of common people and their lives. He looks at diaries, official records, ephemera, and relics of their lives as he pieces together how they lived. Walker loses his father near the beginning of the book, and as he cleans out the house, he finds boxes of papers in the basement and begins to treat the situation as a case study from his own work perspective. His research leads him to these women, and that key connection point with its resulting fame.

She also looks at the aftermath, Vera's fame and further career, what happened to Mary and her children, and how that small connection became an important moment in both their lives. 

An amazing story of two women forging their lives during a difficult time, told with realism and compassion, and the serendipity of life and the chance meetings that change lives.  

In the Kingdom of Men

Finished August 5

In the Kingdom of Men by Kim Barnes

This novel is set in the late 1960s, with some backstory for the main character before that. Gin (Virginia) Mitchell has had a life filled with loss. Much of this is summarized in the first few pages. Her grandfather was a Methodist preacher and her grandmother submissive but secretly rebelling, saving enough to escape back to her family. Her father died in the Korean War, and her mother soon after from cancer, and then her grandmother died. At the age of seven, Gin was taken in by her grandfather, a staunch Methodist preacher and hardscrabble farmer who denounced all that was worldly, prayed often and vociferously, but didn't judge anyone by their race. She took solace in books and sports, trying to hide both from her grandfather and not always succeeding. When one of the most popular boys in the area, Mason McPhee, took at interest in her, she jumped at the chance to escape, and they were soon married.

After another tragic loss, he accepted a job from Aramco, to work as a drilling foreman in Saudi Arabia, and the two found their world utterly changes. 

Given a company house to live in, with luxuries beyond what they'd had before, they are also limited in what they can do. Gin can only leave the compound with her husband's permission, and is expected to behave in ways that don't appeal to her. She makes a couple of friends of women who also rebel against the expected order of things, and tries to make friends with those in more servile positions. Mason is smart and was on a college scholarship before marriage intervened, and he doesn't buy in to the racial inequities prevalent in the company's way of doing things. His actions are dangerous to those in charge and while he and Gin and determined to see it through, others are working against them.

I loved Gin, and her adventurous, curious nature. She tries to see the world through the eyes of others, whether it is Bedouin men and women, her Indian houseboy, or her Israeli friend. She takes to the camera, finding opportunities to see the world in yet another way. She listens, she reads, she tries different food, she  judges people by their actions, not their backgrounds or skin colour. She is a survivor. 

Taking us to the Middle East, when the oil industry there was in its early stages, the author opens a window to a past world that lets us see a world that has echoes in today's. A fascinating read.

Two White Queens and The One-Eyed Jack

Finished May 12 

Two White Queens and The One-Eyed Jack by Heidi Von Palleske

This book is a winner. It takes you into the world of four young people, following their lives from the age of six to their early twenties. Gareth and Johnny are best friends, up for any adventure. When Gareth climbs a tree successfully, Johnny is urged to tackle it after him, climbing higher and higher, but he falls, and is hurt. The fall results in the loss of one of Johnny's eyes. Gareth struggles with the guilt he feels of urging Johnny on. The boys remain friends, but for a long while, there is distance between them that wasn't there before. Interestingly, the incident results in another revelation, the fact that Gareth's older brother Tristan is blind in one eye. As Gareth's family deals with this, and numerous doctor visits are kept, Gareth has a random encounter with two young girls in a waiting room.

These two girls are twin sister, Blanca and Clara, albinos who live with their grandfather in a very dysfunctional family. Their mother, Faye, is living in a mental institution and they go to see her from time to time. The also spend time at the home of their uncle and his family. They are bullied at school, and subjected to strict rules at home, but they find refuge in the home of their downstairs neighbour, Esther Perlman, a refugee from World War II, who was the only one in her family to escape the Nazis. Esther teaches them art and manners, and they begin to plan a way out of their situation, by taking advantage of their uniqueness instead of feeling lesser because of it. These are strong-willed girls and their intense connection with each other is their strength.

Johnny's mother Hilda, is another European immigrant, in her case running from a life that she didn't want to face. But she remembers a figure from her childhood and thinks about how he may be able to help her son. As she reconnects with Siegfried, she also finds that her relationship with her husband, already unravelling, grows even more frayed. 

As Johnny grows up, he grows tired of being the "junior" of his father and reclaims his name as Jack, and finds himself using photography as a type of replacement for his partial loss of vision. It is not until they are teenagers that the young people encounter each other again. But this time, they spend more time with each other and are influenced by each other's experiences. 

This book takes us into the past, dealing with loss and shame and the impulse to forget. But it also looks into the future, with the hope these young people have of starting anew, reinventing themselves and finding new purpose. The book's final scene is a fabulous metaphor for new beginnings. 

Once Upon a River

Finished February 5

Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield

This is a lovely story with some elements of fantasy. It takes place along a river that is both the Thames River in England and not. There are several characters and several storylines that come together.

As the story begins it is Midwinter and in the village of Radcot was an inn called The Swan. Every inn has its specialty and this one was known for its storytelling. The landlady of the inn was Margot Ockwell and the inn had been run by the women of her family for generations. Her married name was Margot Bliss, but the inn always used the old name to keep the tradition. Margot was married to a man who was a storyteller, and who had come to the inn one night from further up the river. His name was Joe. They had numerous daughters, all married and left home and a son Jonathan, who was still not grown and would always live at the inn, being a bit slow and delicate.

On this midwinter night, a figure with a monstrous looking face stumbled in carrying what appeared to be a large doll. They came around him as he dropped and realized that his face was injured and they sent someone for Rita Sunday, the midwife and healer that lived nearby. It was only after some time that they realized the thing they thought was a doll was a young girl, and that she seemed to be dead. 

They laid her carefully in the other room and Rita arrived and did her work on the man, checking him for other injuries and mending him as best she could. There were certain signs on his body that she announced indicated that he was a photographer. A card in his pocket confirmed this. Rita then went to look at the child and while she agreed that the child was dead, something kept her by her side, and then suddenly, the child was no longer dead. At this seeming miracle, she took the child in to the main room of the inn to warm. Shortly thereafter the inn closed for the night and Rita stayed to look after the two patients. 

As word spread of this event through those that had been there, Rita continued to puzzle over the situation, something she would do for many months going forward. 

There were two families that heard of the child that had been found. The Vaughans, who lived in a nearby manor house and were wealthy had their two year old daughter kidnapped two years before, and she would now be about the same age as this child. Mrs. Vaughan has been heartbroken, aching for her child and not engaging with anyone as she had before. As soon as she hears, she rushes to the inn and claims the child upon sight. 

The Armstrongs are a large farming family with an interesting history. Mr Armstrong is a black man who was supported in starting his life as an adult by his own white father. Mrs. Armstrong is a woman with a unique talent for seeing people as they truly are. Their oldest son has been a trial and they recently learned that he was a father and it would seem that this child could be his daughter. 

Another woman Lily also swears that she knows the child, as her younger sister Anne. But the woman has issues and doesn't seem to understand the impossibility of her claim, and she appears to have no desire to take the child herself. 

As the recovered photographer, Henry Daunt, and Rita join forces to look into the matter further and the story continues with interesting sidenotes over the next several months.

As this story developed, and we could see into the feelings of many of the characters, I began to care about their individual lives and stories, wanting things to work out for each one. It was all related to the storytelling in some ways too, as this story is itself. It felt like the kind of tale you'd hear around the fire in past days.

I liked the way that things converged and appreciated the epilogue that took us into the future a ways to see what happened in the near term to the various people. 

A great read.

Starlight

Finished October 1
Starlight by Richard Wagamese

This novel was left unfinished when Wagamese died in 2017. Starlight is the last name of one of the main characters in the book, Frank Starlight. The book opens with him as a young man at the funeral of the man who raised him. He intends to leave the remote farm and explore the world, but as he gets to the main road, he stops and considers and turns around for home.
The book then jumps ahead a few years. Frank has found a passion in photography, growing close to the wild animals that share his area of the world and finding a way to share intense moments of their being through his photography. He lives a bachelor life on the farm, with his hired man Eugene Roth. They both work hard, keeping the farm and woodlot in good form and raising cattle.
Emmy Strong has had a tough life and her choices haven't always been good ones. Lately she's been living with Jeff Cadotte, a man who treats her as a possession he can do with as he will. As her part of the book begins, he and one of his friends Anderson are sleeping off a drunken night gambling. She aims to take some money from him, his truck and leave to escape what she fears will by the end of her. She also fears for her daughter Winnie, now nine, as she sees how Cadotte is starting to look at her. Her departure doesn't go well, and she is now on the run, and Cadotte is a man who believes strong in revenge and retribution, not recognizing it is his actions that have led to hers.
When Emmy's journey leads her to the town near Frank's farm, and she takes one chance too many, they enter each other's lives in an interesting way, Frank remembering the man that took him in when he didn't know how to live his life.
This is a story about how important our connection to nature is, how we can use nature to connect to our truest selves and find our way in life. It is also a love story on many levels. Frank is a very peaceful man, a man who knows his world, but is still uncomfortable with the fame his photographs have brought him. This is definitely a book that offers comfort, and the editors have offered some insight into the ending that Wagamese intended for this story.

Orhan's Inheritance

Finished September 16
Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian

This novel is set in 1990, where Orhan is a young man working in his grandfather's rug business in Turkey. Orhan's grandfather Kemal took on the business after his war service in the fight against Russia in the early twentieth century. As the book begins, Kemal has died, with his body found sitting in a vat of dye. Orhan knows that by tradition, his father would inherit, but the will his grandfather wrote left the business to him, and the house to a woman that Orhan has never heard of, Seda Melkonian.
Orhan's grandfather and father have never got along well, and his father has had little to nothing to do with the business. It is Orhan and his Auntie Fatma who deal with the business.
It is a notebook of drawing, one of many his grandfather had, that the lawyer gives Orhan, that has the address of Seda. She is in a nursing home in California.
Orhan is determined to go there and meet her, not only to convince her to sell the house back to them, but also to find out why his grandfather left it to her.
The letter from Orhan preceding his arrival is a reminder of the past for Seda, a past she long ago put behind her. And as she meets with Orhan, the story takes us back to 1915, the year in which Turkey began the deportation and genocide of its Armenian citizens. As we learn Seda's story, we also learn of her connection to Kemal, and to the rug business that he ran. We also learn a lot about this part of history, a difficult and sad history.
Orhan had his own time of exile, when, as a budding young photographer, he was imprisoned for the subjects of his photographs, and eventually freed on condition of exile. Thus he lived in Germany for a few years before returning home and joining the family business. He hasn't picked up a camera in years. As he leaves to go to California, Auntie Fatma gives him his old camera and an album of his photographs, and, during his trip he finds himself slipping back into the old ways of looking again.
This is a tale of discovery, of history resurfacing, and of hope.
The author is herself of Armenian heritage and part of her impetus for writing the story was for her own children to know their history.

The Second Winter

Finished January 20
The Second Winter by Craig Larsen

This historic novel begins with a woman, Angela, in 1969 who has just visited East Berlin. She has visited an aunt she hasn't seen in years, since before the wall went up, and brought some things back with her. One of them is a picture, taken by her father who died in the war. The picture is of a young woman and a name on the back says Polina. In a later section we see how the separation came to be between Angela and her East German family members.
We see the young Polina in Poland, with her family and her good friend Julian, and we see the war begin for them, and the family get separated.
But the bulk of this story is told over the winter of 1941-42 in Denmark. The first section her follows Frederik, a farmhand in Jutland. We see how he lives under the occupation, and how he and his two young adult children must work very hard and long to survive. We see the risks they take, and we see the desperation in the actions Frederik takes. The next story during this time is that of Hermann, Angela's father, a wartime photographer for the Germans. And we see his connection to Polina and how he came to have the things that Angela has been given.
Other sections from this time cover the experiences of other characters, Frederik's daughter Amalia, his son Oskar, other members of the rural community they live in, and the family that Frederik is estranged from. We see how Polina is connected to Frederik.
This is a story of people connected through small accidents of fate that through them together, of what people will do to survive and keep their families alive during times of war.
A fascinating tale.

Eight Girls Taking Pictures

Finished February 12
Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto

This novel has eight sections, each telling the story of a fictional woman photographer. Some of their lives are taken from real women photographers, and inspired by their work. Each section has a photo at the beginning, and the photo is part of that woman's story. The photos are real, and all by famous women photographers. While each story is separate, there are links between them. Some women visit the same places as previous women, or are inspired by their work, or meet them, or are linked to them in other ways.
The first woman is American. As the story begins, it is 1917. She married late, to a painter, but the marriage and motherhood didn't bring her the fulfillment she expected. She had studied in Germany, and had her own studio and a name for herself before marriage. We see her looking back to her earlier life, as she faces a crisis in her life that has her questioning her choices.
The second woman is English, one who finagled an apprenticeship with a female society photographer, and learned avidly at every opportunity, before opening her own portrait studio and then moved into advertising work. We see her from a young woman in the early 1900s through the end of the 1930s, much of that in a relationship and then a marriage with a man who is supportive by troubled.
The third woman is an Italian who emigrated to California  in 1913 at the age of seventeen with her family. She lived a very bohemian life, first in California, and then in Mexico, where the rise of communism played a large role in her life. She was beautiful and impetuous, and loved new experiences. Here we see her in 1929 before we learn how she arrived to that life-changing point in her life. She started as a model and actress, and then moved into photography, urban images and then portraits.
The fourth woman is again American, daughter of an avid amateur photographer and wealthy candy manufacturer. She was unconventional and rebellious and raised in an unorthodox manner. Her story starts in 1915 and takes us through WWII. She too starts as a model, before moving into photography, first as an apprentice, and then having her own shows by the mid 1930s, and eventually into being a war photographer.
The fifth woman is a German Jew, and her story begins in 1927. She too has an unconventional upbringing, with a father who offered her the same advantages and opportunities as her brother. As the story begins, she is a window dresser for a large department store, but her innovations don't go over well. With a famous architect father and glass artist mother, she is able to apprentice to a good photographer and then study at the Bauhaus school in Dessau. She has a strong group of female bluestocking friends, mostly other Jewish women with careers. But the war interrupts her studio and advertising work, and takes her to a new life, first in London, and then in South America.
The sixth woman is an American, and her story starts in 1951 in Rome at the age of 29, and takes us into the late 1960s. She begin studying photography at the age of eight, encouraged by her mechanical toy-maker father and costume designer mother to choose a creative discipline.a developed a career taking photography assignments for magazines. Her stop in Rome on return from an assignment is to take stock of her life and decide whether to move in a certain direction. In Rome, she meets a woman who becomes her model and muse, and a friend who encourages her through her next stage of life. We see her domesticity and the creative way she uses her circumstances.
The seventh woman is also American, a woman whose romantic entanglement has led her into a partnership with her lover that isn't entirely satisfying. As she takes photos for a project on women and gender views, with her lover late for a shoot, she has a conversation with her model that has her making new decisions for her life. Her story is in the early 1970s.
The last woman is also American, but a woman who is most comfortable in the small town she grew up in, taking pictures of her children, her life, her surroundings. She asks for help in learning about the old camera her father bought her, and her skills bring her both admiration and notoriety as her career takes off in the late 1980s.
I really enjoyed these women's lives, their interaction with other creative people, and the men (and women) in their lives. It was interesting to see how reactions to some things grew more conservative over time, and other things became commonplace. This is a story of women artists, varied but all passionate and serious about their work.

London Tides

Finished April 19
London Tides by Carla Laureano

This novel is a story of self-acceptance, and love.
Grace Brennan fled London a decade ago to work as a war photographer, leaving her fiance with her ring and a note. She was inspired by her photographer, who died in their home country of Ireland trying to cover the story of unrest there. But while Grace was running towards the work she loved and was driven to share, what was she running from.
She left behind Olympian rower Ian MacDonald, confused and unhappy at her flight. Ian has moved on, running his younger brother's restaurant business, but personally he still hasn't moved forward.
When the two of them reconnect, they will have to face all the things that kept them apart, as well as own up to their own identities.
This story shows how easy it is to do what others expect you to do, instead of being true to that small voice inside of you that knows who you really are and what you really want. It tells the story of PTSD and its effects on one's psyche.
This is a novel that follows the author's earlier book Five Days in Skye, whose characters also have a role here.