THE KITCHEN HOUSE (Kathleen Grissom)

Seven-year-old Lavinia arrives at Tall Oaks in 1791 as an indentured servant to Captain James Pyke.  Ill and recently orphaned, the Irish girl is given to the care of Belle, Captain Pyke's illegitimate mulatto daughter.  Living in the kitchen house among the slaves, whom she considers her family, Lavinia witnesses the heart-rending despair of parents and children, husbands and wives, as slaves are sold and bought, beaten and abused.  Miss Martha, Captain Pyke's mentally fragile wife, is addicted to laudanum and unable to cope with the sudden deaths of 4-year-old daughter Sally or the obvious abuse of son Marshall at the hands of his cruel tutor.

The novel begins in 1810, where we see the adult Lydia running with her daughter Ellie, returning to Tall Oaks in an attempt to save her beloved friends from the cruelty of Marshall and the plantation's nasty overseer.  Then we travel back in time to where the story began, with Lavinia's arrival at the plantation.  Grissom's meticulous research and wonderful ability to tell a story bring Lydia's narrative to life.  Belle's story is told in some sections of the book, but her character holds back a bit and the reader is never quite able to fully feel her point of view, perhaps due to the natural reticence of the character.  Overall, I would recommend this novel wholeheartedly.  It offers an interesting historical perspective of slavery, murder, rape, birth and death, great cruelty and great love, something for everyone wrapped in an incredible historical package.

THE PRICE OF MURDER (Bruce Alexander)

Sir John Fielding, the blind founder of Great Britains' Bow Street Runners, is a sort of Nero Wolfe character, the brains behind the investigations that are carried out for him by his assistant, Jeremy Proctor, his Archie Goodwin.  In The Price of Murder, Jeremy investigates the murder of a young girl whose body is found in a local canal after her mother apparently has sold her.  Jeremy's fiancee, Clarissa Roundtree, gets involved after one of her friends disappears as well.  Alexander, basing his series on the career of real-life magistrate Sir John Fielding in the mid-1800's, has crafted an interesting mystery.  The reader is immersed in the world of Georgian England, including the popular sport of horse racing.  When the murdered girl's uncle, a diminutive jockey improbably named Deuteronomy Plummer, gets involved with the case, complications ensue.  Alexander does an excellent job of moving the reader from the upper-class to the working class to the dregs of society and back again.  As a mystery, I'm not sure I would tout it as competition for Christie or Louise Penny, but the characters are memorable and, in many cases, endearing.  I loved the running sub-plot about Jeremy and Clarissa's planned engagement and Clarissa's decidedly modern attempts to pin Jeremy down to a formal commitment.  I also loved the authentic flavor of the historical setting.  This is the 10th in the Fielding series.  I would consider reading others, especially for the historical detail.

BETWEEN A MOTHER AND HER CHILD (Elizabeth Noble)

Let's begin by saying that I didn't dislike this book, but it wasn't my favorite by this author.  I have read several other novels by Elizabeth Noble and I think she is a talented writer.  I especially enjoy her character development and the complexity of relationships among her characters.  It took me a long time to read this novel, perhaps because I have been busy with holiday preparations and work crises, so it left me with the feeling that the story had dragged a bit.  It was a bit long, also.

Maggie and Bill Barrett were devastated by the death of their son, Jake, in the Indonesian tsunami of 2004.  Jake, a talented, vibrant athlete and student, was traveling with his 2 best friends when the tragedy struck, leaving his parents, his younger sister, Ali, and his 10-year-old special needs brother, Stan, each coping with the loss in different ways.  As the story opens Maggie and Bill have been separated for about a year.  It is apparent that Bill has attempted to move on with his life, visiting Indonesia to claim his son's body, attending grief support groups, and finally moving out at Maggie's request.  Maggie is unable to move past her grief and get on with her life until she meets Kate, an older woman who moves in with Kate and her two children as a sort of companion and housekeeper.  Kate lost her much-loved husband fairly recently and seeks a family to love and to give her life new purpose. The circumstances of Maggie and Kate's situation are not quite believable.  Maggie's younger sister, visiting from Australia, answers Kate's ad seeking a place with a family and interviews her without Maggie's knowledge.  It is quite an unorthodox means of getting your sister out of her rut!

One of the things that IS very believable about this novel is the tone of the relationships among the characters: the love between the sisters,  the sadness and resulting alienation of the parents, the frustration of the daughter trying to live a life that has been denied to her beloved older brother. There are a lot of complex emotions here.  Although the situation is a bit strange, the ultimate resolutions are realistic and not sugar-coated.  Overall, worthwhile and memorable.