It seems like lately I'm reading a lot of intense books focusing on loss and regret, but this one touched these elements and shook the foundation much, much more. So Far Away (available for pre-order now) by Meg Mitchell Moore is a reminder to not look away, to not expect that someone else will take care of the problem that is right before you. After all, maybe you're supposed to be the one to fix it.

Bridget was an Irish immigrant who moved to Boston and became a maid for a rich family in the early 1920s. When her diary is uncovered in the cellar of a house by thirteen-year-old Natalie, it's Bridget's story that brings Natalie into Kathleen's life. Through this stirring and heart-rending story, Meg Mitchell Moore has beautifully woven three lives together to create hope for two women who are at different points in life. Natalie is beginning her young adult journey and Kathleen nears retirement. Each has their own pain to share, but both have just as much at stake.

At thirteen-years-old, Natalie is a little older than her years. Dealing with her parents' separation and her mother's depression that leaves her sleeping throughout the day and night, along with the cruel cyberbullying from her former best friend is completely devastating and has made her grow up much sooner than she should. People disappoint and drop their loyalties with others all the time, but she shouldn't have had to learn it so young in life. Her independent study project in school has grabbed her interest and has provided the distraction needed for her when she finds an old notebook in the cellar of her house on Milk Street, hidden in the shadowy back corners. Researching its potential relationship to her family brings her to the Massachusetts State Archives and to Kathleen.

In her late fifties, Kathleen feels like she has already lived her life and suffered losses with no chance to recover. With her husband passing away at the start of their marriage, Kathleen's daughter Susannah is everything to her, but when she loses Susannah, too, life becomes just one more day after another. When she meets Natalie, Kathleen doesn't initially understand that maybe this young girl might be someone she can finally help, to make up for all of her earlier losses. She doesn't realize that through Natalie, and through Bridget's diary, Kathleen may even be able to save herself.

I enjoyed this book and found that it was quite difficult to put the story down. Each character had a distinct voice, even secondary characters like Kathleen's co-worker Neil, who was struggling to adopt a child from Haiti with his partner, Adam, ended up being a background story that became just as important to me as the book went along. I enjoyed each aspect of the story and felt all of the crucial messages that the characters delivered, but Natalie's story was ultimately the one I anxiously waited for it to return back to when the perspective shifted either to Kathleen or to Bridget's diary. I guess I just wanted to make sure this young girl was okay. Her tormented school life completely enveloped me, simply because I just can't stand it when people pick on others. I cannot stand it.

Cyberbullying is just not something to sweep under the rug nowadays. Each generation develops different ways, meaner tactics representative of the times to exert influence and control over others, and today's younger generation uses social media and texting to bully. Physical fighting happens, but cyberbullying now adds a completely different complexity to it. School systems can no longer avoid this deeper issue, and I think the biggest message to all of us, those with or without children, those who work with children and anyone who comes in contact with today's generation, should take this passage seriously (note: this is an uncorrected proof so the finished copy may reflect changes):

Who did Kathleen think she was, to think that she could get involved with this mess with Natalie? Then again, who was she to think she couldn't?

With painfully difficult moments and hard truths of life, I enjoyed the story and writing immensely. It's clear that Meg Mitchell Moore has a passion for the subject matter, and she is an author I'll look forward to more from her, and I'll also be sure to pick up her debut novel, The Arrivals, as well.

So Far Away had all the elements I enjoy: Boston, archives, research, an old diary. It's given me a lot to think about and I very much so recommend this book.

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Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Release Date: 5/29/2012 (available for pre-order now)

Pages: 336

About the Author

Meg Mitchell Moore worked for several years as a journalist. Her work has been published in Yankee, Continental, Women's Health, Advertising Age and many other business and consumer magazines. She received a B.A. from Providence College and a Master's Degree in English Literature from New York University. The Arrivals is her first novel. Meg lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with her husband, their three children and a beloved border collie.

Visit the author:

• On her website
• On Facebook
• On Twitter

FTC Disclosure: I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley for my honest review.

When a flock of hoopoe birds arrive at the time a young girl is born, midwives descend upon a home to usher in the birth of a child born under these prophesied events. The mother dies after childbirth and Eleonora, a gifted child, grows up with her attentive father and strict stepmother. When her father has to sail to Stamboul (Istanbul) on business, eight-year-old Eleonora becomes a stowaway on the boat to escape the overbearing stepmother who believes Eleonora should only focus on housework instead of books. Upon arriving in Stamboul, she is welcomed into the home of her father's business partner, and her life expands. Surrounded by the tools of knowledge, her intellectual genius flourishes, one in which this eight-year-old girl speaks multiple languages, can write passages verbatim from Virgil's The Aeneid, and breaks code with the ease of an expert. Soon, her interaction with the Sultan grows into an advisory capacity, and the future of Stamboul is affected. Could she fulfill the prophecy?

Mastering the brilliance of historical fiction and vivid imagery, Michael David Lukas has crafted an elegant debut novel set in Stamboul, and I was absolutely drawn in from the first page. With rich and vibrant colors combined with the grittiness of life in the late 1800s in Turkey, and with just a dash of magical realism, the book resonates with the flourish of beautiful imagery. Each character is intense and genuine, and it's clear that research has been carefully documented. I had an incredibly difficult time putting this book down once I was caught up in the new life of a little eight-year-old girl (who is essentially a savant) and with the fluidity of the events and descriptions of her experiences and most especially, her abilities. I have a sneaking suspicion that there might be a follow-up to this book (this just may be, though, since I enjoyed this book so much, more of my own wish to travel back and escape into Eleonora's world again). This debut author has prepared readers for a long career and I anticipate more of his work!

One of my favorite passages:

In its time, the sun rose unsteady from a distant corner of the sky, and with it the fog lifted. Already the Bosporus was teeming, packed with fishing boats, caïques, and the occasional lumbering steamer. On the shore, under the shades of cypress trees, miniature people hawked and haggled, bustled, bargained, and prayed. Three gargantuan turtle-domed mosques glinted in the rising sun, their minarets piercing the sky like bayonets, and there, at the confluence of waters, was the most glorious building Eleonora had ever seen. Gardens upon gardens, arches, balustrades, and clerestories ringed by a gleaming white marble wall and watched over by a regiment of glass towers, Topkapi Palace, the residence of His Excellency Sultan Abdulhamid II, sat perched on the rim of the Golden Horn, a testament to inconceivable wealth. (Chapter Seven)

It's pretty safe to say that I loved this book...

About the Author

Michael David Lukas has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a late-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a Rotary Scholar in Tunisia. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Maryland, his writing has been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and the Georgia Review. He has received scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf  Writers' Conference, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. He currently lives in Oakland, CA, less than a mile from where he was born. When he isn't writing, he teaches creative writing to third and fourth graders.

Find out more about Michael at his website by clicking here.

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Many thanks to Trish with TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to read this book!

Please take a look through the upcoming tour schedule to read more reviews!

All of the tour stops for this book can be found by clicking here.
Monday, February 28th: A Fair Substitute for Heaven

Tuesday, March 1st: Unabridged Chick

Wednesday, March 2nd: Simply Stacie

Thursday, March 3rd: Janet Boyer Blog

Friday, March 4th: Kelly’s Lucky You!

Monday, March 7th: Book Journey 

Tuesday, March 8th: Coffee and a Book Chick

Wednesday, March 9th: Teresa’s Reading Corner

Wednesday, March 9th: Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books

Monday, March 14th: Like Fire

Wednesday, March 16th: The Whimsical Cottage

Monday, March 21st: Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

Wednesday, March 23rd: Layers of Thought

Happy Reading,

Coffee and a Book Chick

I love it when a book is able to seamlessly and eloquently combine fiction and history, leaving you wondering where fiction ends and truth begins.  As a voracious reader, I enjoy being able to delicately step through a story's pages and revel in the imagination of the writer, whilst learning a new nugget of actual history that sadly, didn't make any of my history classes in high school or college.

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks, does just that.  This is a treat beyond all compare, beauty of history and story within front and back covers.  The Haggadah is a Jewish book that is read on the first night of Passover and tells the stories of enslavement, and the subsequent miracles performed by God which ultimately resulted in freedom.  In People of the Book, Hannah Heath is a rare books expert from Australia who travels to battle-torn Sarajevo in 1996.  Her task is to preserve the beautiful Sarajevo Haggadah that has just been uncovered after 100 years.  This Haggadah, though, is very different both in color and in sketch -- odd that it has survived throughout the years, since its original creation date sometime in the 14th century in Spain would have been during a time when drawing a person and illuminating it as such, although clothed, was considered offensive.  Somehow it has survived throughout the years from the Spanish Inquisition to the Holocaust.  Piqued by this curiosity, and passionate about preservation, Hannah also finds several items that are encapsulated within the pages of the book, such as a red stain, or a white hair, or an insect wing, and these objects become the opportunity for the author to explain in whose hands this book may have fallen, and the significance they earned in history.  We watch the book travel from Venice and to Vienna, and we learn the stories of the people who held the book, cared for the book, and saved the book, ultimately saving a critical piece of Jewish history.  Although some of these sections are fictionalized, the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah sends the message to the reader that it has become even more than just the colorful drawings and the binding of it, but about the people of the book, the people who fought and died for this incredible piece of history.

I found this refreshing and moving, and I was struck by the significance of a book that is of such beauty and importance to history.  It made me wonder who really were the people that protected it through hundreds of years?  Geraldine Brooks writes each character and scene in such a fluid manner, moments depicted with such heartbreak, such horror, and yet with hope.  It moved quickly for me and it wasn't long before I finished.

When I closed the book, I felt regret that I had never learned of this subject and felt that it was a duty of mine to learn more on such an important topic.  I immediately began to research away and found several important sites that held more information that helped my education on this subject grow.

• The Sarajevo Haggadah
• Congress of North American Bosniaks
• Geraldine Brooks

Reading People of the Book has made my visits to the museum a much different experience, awareness more profoundly etched within me, as I look at an object on display -- in whose hands did this significant artifact fall, how did this manage to survive time and human ignorance to get to this museum behind protected glass, for me to view?  And on my list of places to visit, I will add Sarajevo no matter how battle-torn, simply to be able to visit with the amazing Sarajevo Haggadah, where it is on permanent display.

Please visit Farm Lane Books Blog and the recent post on Book Drum, which is designed to help a reader truly understand all aspects of the book they are reading -- a bit like an online book site that provides a snapshot into the history or areas discussed in a book.