Gap Creek

Fiction by Robert Morgan

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The author states in the afterword of this book that he has been telling the story of his maternal grandparents in their first year of marriage around 1900. The book follows Julie and Hank, aged seventeen and eighteen respectively, as they try to start their married life in a little house in Gap Creek, South Carolina. 

It’s a really wonderful story with great characters. The hardships that the couple, especially Julie, faces, are so big as to seem almost insurmountable. It’s amazing to think of the things our ancestors had to overcome. 

TWO THUMBS UP

Waiting for the Moon

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In 1882, an unknown young woman tries to kill herself just off the coast of Maine. She doesn’t succeed; instead she ends up at a mental institution nearby, one with only a few forgotten patients and run by Ian Carrick, a lonely doctor who needs his own healing. It’s obvious to the reader that Ian and the amnesiac woman he names Serena will fall in love, but many contrived plot devices will stand in their way. 

This is a romance novel, one of Kristin Hannah’s early writings, and it is not nearly as good as her later works. I didn’t really like it. 

THUMBS DOWN