A Potpourri of Opinions

  The Courtesan's Daughter Susanne Dunlap Publication date: April 25, 2023 by Atmosphere Press Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 3 🍷🍷🍷 Summary: What happens when a daughter’s dream and a mother’s sordid past collide? 1910 New York. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie and her French-immigrant mother Justine eke out a living doing piecework in a tenement on the Lower East Side, while Sylvie attends school so that she can escape their life of poverty by becoming a teacher. At least, that’s what her mother believes should happen. Sylvie, though, has a different dream. She wants to be a star in the new moving pictures, just like the beautiful Vitagraph Girl. When she meets a dangerously handsome Italian boy at church one Sunday and he encourages her ambitions, she begins secretly taking steps toward the career she knows her mother won’t approve of. But Sylvie isn’t the only one with secrets. Justine has kept her sordid past from Sylvie ever since they came to New York fifteen years before, sti...

Sunflowers Beneath the Snow Terri M. Brown Publication date: January 5, 2022 by Atmosphere Press Genre: Historical Fiction Rating: 5 🍷🍷🍷🍷🍷 Summary:  A Ukrainian rebel. Three generations of women bearing the consequences. A journey that changes everything. When Ivanna opens the door to uniformed officers, her tranquil life is torn to pieces - leaving behind a broken woman who must learn to endure cold, starvation, and the memories of a man who died in the quintessential act of betrayal. Using her thrift, ingenuity, and a bit of luck, she finds a way to survive in Soviet Ukraine, along with her daughter, Yevtsye. But the question remains, will she be strong enough to withstand her daughter’s deceit and the eventual downfall of the nation she has devoted her life to? Or will the memories of her late husband act as a shadow haunting everyone and everything she loves, including Ionna, the granddaughter that never knew him? In Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, Teri M. Brown explores the ...