Beth Moore is an NYT best-selling author, speaker, and founder of Living Proof Ministries, devoted to women and knowing the transformative love of Jesus Christ through the study of the Bible. I recognized Beth Moore’s name but had never heard her speak or read her many books and lecture materials. Reading her 2023 memoir All My Knotted-Up Life was a profound and thoughtful introduction to a woman who has opened her life in ways most people could never accomplish. Moore says, “I wrote the book to untie knots kept clenched in sweaty fists all my life.” She broke a long relationship with the Southern Baptist Church, much of which had to do with the denomination’s support for Donald Trump after the release of the Access Hollywood tapes. The knots in her life go back to childhood and secrets she kept for decades. The book portrays pain, survival, and the power of God’s healing in her life. The book and Beth Moore have become one of my favorites.
Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt is a magical realism novel. The remarkably bright creature is Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living in a Puget Sound aquarium. It was another Skagit Valley Book Club selection that I would not have read on my own but nonetheless enjoyed. Tova Sullivan is an older woman working nights at the aquarium who has experienced tragedy and forms a bond with Marcellus as she goes about her cleaning work. Life becomes complicated, and Marcellus, a bit of a thief and hoarder, finds ways to communicate with humans before his anticipated death. Each character’s backstory is remarkable and makes the book unique.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann was the subject of a 60 Minutes episode because the 18th-century story of sailing into anarchy, murder, imperialism, starvation, and return to England has so much to explore. A British ship, the Wager, left England in 1740 on a secret mission during a war against Spain. The ship sailed around South America and ended up on an island off the coast of Patagonia, stranded for months, facing starvation in a barren wilderness. If the crew had died on that island, there would be no story worth of a documentary, but the crew does return to England, where a court martial was conducted on charges of mutiny, reason, and murder. The Wager is a true story with all the elements of a double thriller during the voyage and the ensuing Admiralty court martial when the crew is rescued and returned home.
Horse: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks is historical fiction based on a real racehorse named Lexington, born in Kentucky in 1850 and became a record-breaking thoroughbred. An enslaved Black groom forms a bond with the foal that continues as the horse races into racetrack history. That history is largely forgotten until a painting of Lexington is found in New York City in 1954, reopening a powerful story about sport, racism, animal medicine, and art. Brooks winds together a complex plot of multiple timelines and characters that is often heartbreaking. If you read Horse, you will learn why Geraldine Brook is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith is a PBS Great American Read Top 100 pick, published in 1943, and has very little to do with a tree. It is all about the characters who grab your heart, even if 1912 Williamsburg does not. The protagonist is 11-year-old Francie Nolan, who you, as the reader, want to protect and guide as she struggles to help her brother Neeley in a family of first-generation immigrants plagued by poverty and alcohol. New York City was a difficult place for a little girl with so much to offer to the world and to us.