Monday Odds and Ends

I was thinking when I was getting ready to do this post,
it is funny that I do a gardening blog, when I do not
consider myself to even be a passable gardener. I have
never had a green thumb and while I am nuts about
flowers and growing things and canning and freezing,
and even cooking, I would have never put down on
my life list of things I like to do, would it be gardening.

What I am nuts about has been until this year has been
books. My secret ambition was to open a bookstore or
work in a library. I have books and books and every
closet has boxes and boxes and I have book shelves
in almost every room, and yes, I have read them.
That is another thing I do almost to a fault, I read.
I really know more about books than I have ever known
about gardening. I have first editions that I hold onto
that sometimes I think I have made a idol. So I thought
why not make a Monday post about books that I love.
I have shown you Charles Dickens and Elisabeth Prentiss.

My author I would like you to meet is Bess Streeter Aldrich.
I love all of her books, but my favorite is A Lantern in Her Hand,
and A White Bird Flying, of course, Mother Mason.

This is what the book says about it. " Bess Streeter Aldrich
knew what she was wring about. Her protagonist,
a strong-minded pioneer woman named Abbie Deal,
was modeled on her own mother, who in 1854 had traveled
by covered wagon to the Midwest.
In A Lantern in her Hand, Abbie accompanies her family to the
soon-to-be-state of Nebraska. There, in 1865, she marries and settles into
a sod house of her own. The novel describes Abbie's years of child
raising, of making a frontier home able to withstand every adversity."

As a woman who had families who traveled to Oklahoma, some
on the Trail of Tears, some of them were "sooners. I love this book because Bess Streeter Aldrich writes a story
about all of our families, because in America, we all got here because someone
took a chance and left it all behind for a brighter future.
I do love books and this one is a good one.
Have a lovely Monday.