Yesteryear is a magical novel based on the true story of Fran Striker, a struggling radio play scriptwriter who would eventually create The Lone Ranger. Set in Buffalo, New York during the early 1930s, Yesteryear explores the events and magical influences that led to the show’s debut, a show that provided hope to Americans during The Great Depression and made The Lone Ranger and Striker heroes.
A young African-American soldier nearly meets his fate honoring his country in World War II and the Korean War. Suffering physical and psychological injury, he is finally, after decades able to recount the harrowing and traumatic events that took place during those years. The strength of his faith, and love for his family and country kept him alive to return home, get married and raise a family. The main character Sgt. David Henry had to fight the enemy in the field while fighting racism and prejudice from the U. S. armed forces and the American public.
The two girls sat in the back of the car as it rattled through the darkness. Their driver was a stranger, and their destination was currently unknown to them. In November 1979, Ailbe and Maire disappear from their rural village in Ireland, never to return. Pregnant out of wedlock, they are now outcasts from society. Believing they will at least have each other, the girls are devastated when Ailbe is dumped at the gates of a place known only as ‘Bessborough’, whilst Maire is forced to continue on to Dublin, to be cared for by the relatives of her married lover.
From USA Today best-selling and multi-award-winning author Jacqueline Friedland comes a gripping work of fiction based on the true story of female abolitionist Ann Phillips and her connection to Anthony Burns, a young man who briefly escaped American slavery and rocked the nation with his astoundingly heroic story. A passionate advocate of abolition from her earliest years, Ann’s activism was derailed just before her twenty-fourth birthday, when she fell sick with a mysterious illness.
Identical twins. Billy and Tommy Jones were born out of wedlock in Lancashire, England in 1921 at a time when such a thing was regarded as a disgrace. Tommy was taken by a catholic priest and placed in an orphanage the day after his birth. Neither boy knows they have a brother until thirty-two years later. The trajectory of each boy’s life takes them to different parts of the world where they suffer the consequences of circumstances beyond their control which they must confront and resolve.
Katherine MacDonald is on her own. Divorced with two small children while Edinburgh is being bombed during World War II, she is desperate to survive. Her long hours working at a laundry barely pay her bills. Her only solace is writing, but she could never imagine how a little pen found in an antiques store would change her life. Astonished, Katherine watches as the pen drags her hand across pages, scrawling out words from the past—the words of the medieval knight Francois Jacques LaMar.
March 1944, Germany is losing the war. Nazi scientists are constructing a deadly weapon in a secret laboratory under the guidance of the SS. Ahron Roth, commander of U-931 fears for the fate of Germany, the devastation that will come with the upcoming allied invasion. Ordered back early from patrol to Saint-Nazaire, France he discovers his secret love Ginette, a young French girl has been spirited away by her father.
Greece. Politics. Love. Danger. Reeling from a failed marriage and spurred on by a burgeoning sense of feminism, twenty-five-year-old Kate accepts a position as a speech therapist in a center for children with cerebral palsy in Thessaloniki, Greece. It is 1974, and the recent end of Greece’s seven-year dictatorship has ignited a fiery anti-American sentiment within the country. Despite this, as her Greek improves, Kate teaches communication to severely handicapped children, creates profound friendships, and finds a home in the ancient and historied city.
This book is so much more than historical fiction; it’s about the characters that are described so well you begin to believe they are real and that you are a part of the family. To say this is a mystery about a murder on Millionaire’s Row is to oversimplify the complexity of the story. One tends to have to think back a few pages when another character is introduced, and there are a lot of characters. There are stories behind the main story, but without complicating it too much, I was amazed at how it all came together at the end.
I’ve been enthralled by the history of Southern California for a long time, and when a book such as The Memory Keeper comes to my attention, I start reading. What a fabulous piece of historical fiction. The Collins’ have developed characters that are difficult to let go once you reach the very last page and you want the authors’ to write the next chapter in this family’s saga.
