My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Pirate Hunter by Tom Morrisey is one of those fun reads. A pirate on the Caribbean seas–a la Captain Jack Sparrow.

Though separated by time, the main characters share a family trial that forces them into a confrontation of sons and fathers.

Read it because Morrisey is an excellent story teller. Finish it, because it’s got a great dual time period story, each one of wonderful detail and inspirational message.

When it’s over, you want more. The ending might be a tad rushed, but the bulk of the message is a beautiful story of redemption and faith. Great job, and will look for more books by Morrisey!

~Ashley

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One book, four couples, eight lives intertwined, six of them–in grief after losing two of their own.

Did you get that? Sounds like my daughter’s word problems from math homework, but in reality–it’s the Castaways, by Elin Hilderbrand. One wonders if an author of this caliber takes time to read or scan every review of her work. If so, I’m offering a hearty hello! and bravo! You’ve gone and made a fan for life. Expect a spike in back-list sales!

In The Castaways, I identified most with Delilah–a dreamer, a steadfast lover, wife, and mother with her feet on the plot of land tended by her stoic, farmer husband and her head in the clouds. She knows at any moment she can take flight, run away, and yet she remains. Driven. Caring. Loving fiercely. Grieving even fiercer for her friends, lost. And love, unrequited. Okay, so I don’t identify with that part–but I have, in the past, and that’s why Delilah (who is VERY close to being a proverbs 31 style wife except for the fact that she doesn’t believe in anything but her friends and family) is easiest to identify with. At least, for me. I fell in love equally with the emotionally bound Phoebe, the two-sides of Andrea, and the men in their lives. Ed–who could be my own husband in his and Andrea’s relationship. Jeffrey–who loves so deeply just in his being there. Addison, sweet, flawed Addison. And of course, Greg and Tess, remembered by all. They are caricatures of us all in the microcosm of Nantucket.

As for the place, it is obvious this is the heart of the author’s home, as much as the octet’s wanderlust shows her love of travel. Nantucket, in its beaches, it’s quaint town square, it’s dunes and isolation. Suddenly, it is someplace I must visit someday.

A wonderful study of personality, friends, relationships, parenting, and forgiveness, The Castaways is not to be missed. Each page should be savored like fine wine, like exotic flavors, like times remembered. It reminds me that too often we live on the surface. There is so much below, beneath us all, that has made us into the people we are. The Castaways reminds us of that. Of failed expectations, secret hopes, hidden dreams, and in the end, that love is all that matters.

Thanks, Elin! and I look forward to following you out of The Castaways, and into The Island.

~Ashley

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HEA, for those of you not in the know, means Happily Ever After. We’re all about Happily Ever After in my house. After all, I’m raising a couple of princesses. This review is special, however, because while I strive for five star writing, a review like this makes me pause.

What about it is special? What makes me feel like I’ve just slid my toe into that glass slipper? Felt it snug around my foot like a lover’s hands?

Guess why…

Blurb

Love can bloom at any age…But, will it wilt under the spotlight?

Former fifties Hollywood starlet—Nona Darling—fell in love onscreen over and again. In her granddaughter Misty’s opinion, true love only exists in the movies and too often, she falls for the villain. Running from a failed relationship and her film production company turned tabloid, she returns to Almendra, California to care for her grandmother, and hide from the world.

Cain Trovato, a small town jack-of-all-trades, finds Misty and refuses to let her escape into obscurity. Blocked for years from songwriting, he starts putting words to music as a way to define his growing feelings.

When the Almendra Film Festival spotlights Nona Darling, Misty’s former fiancée makes a claim to reveal her grandmother’s secret past. No amount of editing will spare the coming scandal. With Cain at her side, can Misty believe in a happily ever beyond the rolling credits?

Clare’s Review

All I can say is, Wow! This story is incredible. Part of the Flower Basket series, each story by a different author, stands alone in its own right. If you only read one, this one would be it.

Cain, a musician and man of many talents, is desperate to write songs again, not having written since his high school girlfriend left him ten years previously. Misty, fleeing a controlling ex-boyfriend hides out in a sleepy town under the guise of caring for her grandmother. Slowly she gets her life back, in more ways than one.

The setting is amazing. I love books that pull you in and make you feel as if you are there and this one does that with its simple but intricate description of the breeze, the olive trees, right down to the paint on the walls and the faded curtains.

Firmly grounded in reality, both Misty and Cain show their fears and strengths equally, in this love story that keeps you turning the pages. The sub-plot is lovely and I didn’t see it coming. The ending is perfect. Definitely one to read over and over.

5 Tea Cups!

I’ve learned how I handle things greatly determines their outlook. When addressing a mistake, it is more important to rebuild them then to focus on the error of their ways.

Life is more important than fiction.

Time spent daydreaming with little girls is worth more than any paycheck.

And, most importantly, though marrying a knight in shining armor matters… nothing polished that vision of him like seeing him laugh and play with your children.

Hope you are having a lovely summer. I’ll be spending the rest of it revising my current manuscript, MAMMOTH SECRETS.

Until next time…

Ashley

I have taken a step back from editing MAMMOTH SECRETS as my heart was heavy, and my spirit flagging. So, instead of writing and rewriting as I’ve been called to do, I picked up ANGELOLOGY, which amazingly enough – I own a lovely autographed edition, thanks to Dona Watson and her Fantasy & Faith blog.

Angelology

Angelology brings you into a world beneath the world, behind a curtain if you will, revealing that which has been veiled from our view. It postulates that society as we know it is an enslaved earth, with the Nephilim–the heirs of the fallen angels aka “Watchers”, now trapped in the bowels of the earth–in control.

Angelologists are those tasked with maintaining the natural order, restoring the earth to that which the Lord intended and managed (according to early philosophers) for a total of 29 seconds before Lucifer fell.

Are you still with me?

The story takes place in both 1999 and 1943, flip flopping briefly to childhood of the main character, Evangeline,  in the 1980s. My favorite parts took place during the revelation of Celestine as a young woman, and Evangeline’s discoveries at St. Rose Convent. The historical flashbacks were so neatly woven into the tale, it became a seamless-secondary novel. I roamed the Paris streets with Celestine and Gabrielle. I bought the historic accounts they read and cataloged, as if the texts by the Venerable Clematis were actual works.

I admit, there were a few moments I had to stop, and breath in my willing suspension of disbelief. There were other moments where I simply turned page after gripping page, hanging on for the ride. Danielle Trussoni is a magnificent story teller, and left me…wanting more.

I want more.

I want a sequel. Are you hearing me, out there, Penguin USA? Ms. Trussoni? You cannot leave me like this. I must know what happens next, to Verlaine, Evangeline, to Angelology as I now know it.

Pretty please, with sugar on top.

~Ashley

Sitting on a porch swing as Spring River lazes through the marsh grass, robins call, ducklings spread their wings and learn to negotiate the take offs and landings in still waters, I’m brought to thinking about life in Mammoth Springs, Arkansas.

This home within a stone’s throw of the falls and the spring head is my history. My mother’s history. My sister and mine. It is how we share the bits and stories that matter. It is who we were, how we came to this place, this moment in time, and who we are today, at this moment, that matters.

I’m about to go help my mama go through papers, pictures, to make lists and plans.

The business end after we buried my grandfather, yesterday.

We love this place, its history, what it means to the eyes of my niece and nephews, my daughters.

This place, and LIFE in Mammoth matters. After all, the little things, the simple things, matter most of all.

He was a pillar of silent strength. A man of few words, who could say more when he appeared in the doorway with two rods, his jaunty set ball cap, and a nod, than he could have said in hours of careless conversation. Robert Dale Bryan passed away on May 31, 2010, at the age of 91.

91.

Allow me to share a moment, of what my Granddaddy Bob meant—and means—to me. Moments in time, but each one, a memory that sparks a million more…

Their home was the only summer camp I ever knew.

I close my eyes, and see a misty morning, my sister and I crammed in the cab of his pickup truck, heading out to feed the cows—he taught us how to call them. How to call his ducks, the three stooges, he named them—and darned if they didn’t come running.

He taught us how to fish. No wonder we loved it. Our first casts were into the stocked ponds of the fish hatchery. Every hook found a bite. We fell instantly in love with the solid tug, a flash of silver, of a rainbow trout or bass breaching the sunlit waters.

I close them again, and I see Geronimo—his favorite hunting dog. No other ever came close in his eyes, though a few tried.

Next, I see a red tack barn—sugar cubes in the door for the horses in the field—and a sweet treat for me, when I thought no one was looking. In my mind’s eye, I can run my hands across new, brilliant hued nylon halters he purchased for the young colt—Gypsy Rose—the one born for my sister, named by my grandmother at the expense of her prize roses. While I enjoyed watching the horses, Paigie lived for them. He saw that in her. The same drive, the same stubborn beauty of my mother.

I remember riding in the back of his truck, hooting and hollering and singing every song we knew with the joy and abandon of our youth. Of chasing fireflies around the ranch house. Of Ginger, my “Pony Express”—the horse who pranced so daintily in sight of Granddaddy and Grandmamma, and couldn’t wait to buck me off when she had the chance. When that little horse rode me under that tree, darned if Granddaddy didn’t go out there with his chainsaw and all but slice that old oak limbless.

If the ranch house was home base, the fields were our playground—the crystal-clear spring, with the little orange coffee cup on a chain—there so anyone could have a drink. The sagging, stone cottage he had us terrified to enter, lest it fall on our heads. The spiny blackberry bushes where we picked and ate ourselves into a pickle from which only Granddaddy could extract us.

Hold 'em out so they'll look bigger...

I remember sneaking over to fish out my uncle’s pond to catch a stringer full of catfish. He taught my sister how to drive a truck on rutted farm roads. I vividly recall the gouging squeal of metal on metal as she grinded her way through the gate. He never scolded. Rarely scolded. Tears of hurt or anger quickly smoothed over with laughter—always quick with a story or teasing joke. He made everything into a game. An adventure.

We spent hot summer days at the river—Rocky Top—the house on the hill with a view of Spring River painted by God himself. Rocky Ozark slopes, rutted, red dirt roads, the lonely call of the train whistle. It’s why that Brooks and Dunn song always struck my core—where I drank my first beer, where I found Jesus…where we flattened pennies on the train tracks and fished off the falls.

And my granddaddy always loved all of us kids. First, my mama—who could do no wrong in his eyes. Then, my sister, and me. Of course, Cody, Taylor, Kellie-Dale, then Rachel and Ellie. I can see him crawling on the living room floor, tickling Rachel’s tummy as a baby. Giggling with Ellie. He had a special place for all the grandkids and loved each of them—each of us—completely.

Our Granddaddy Bob is the river. He’s the hills. He’s the misty, August air. He’s the subtle observance of the ebb and flow of time, measured on stones and the falls. He’s the hatchery, and its weeping willows. The man who wrote a famed paper that drew international attention—though he only had high school education, had scientists from far away as Japan calling for further discussion on his hatchery techniques.

He married a girl of nineteen, who set her sights on him on the steps of the Taylor ranch house—they had my mother, Kay, who grew up to believe she could do anything—and raised us the same way. Granddaddy loved Grandma Vivian forever, even when the loving was a challenge. Her fiery spirit and his steady nature made a perfect match. She went on to her reward, and he told her to go find them a place on a river—and he’d be along.

He was stubborn, stoic, sweet, faithful, loving, honest, kind, frugal, inspirational, enigmatic. My granddad, that I had the honor of sharing with my big sister.

I will miss you forever. I will share your stories with anyone who will stop long enough to hear one. I remember all of them. Every word, and the way you told them.

I love you, Granddaddy Bob, more than I could ever express in this world, and I look forward to seeing you in the next…

Love, Ashley

My oldest on the other hand, mama’s girl. So much like me. Cautious to a fault. In life, in friendship, in everything she tries. Unless she is sure of success, she sits, watches, waits, analyzes. Only when she is truly ready will she commit.

These two have made a friend at the camp ground this trip. Another little blonde girl to play with… and we suddenly have a little break.

While my dear hubby tries to figure out my ipod, I’m taking a minute to observe my kids just at play… taking turns introducing this new one into their fold. Their personalities so evident in how they talk and share and laugh…

Ultimately, they go back to playing together, but today at the campground,their world is expanding…and a little at a time, so is ours.