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I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. I’ve known rivers: Ancient, dusky rivers. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.   poets.org/poetsorg/poem/negro-speaks-rivers  

"The End of Law : A novel of Hitler's Germany, is a sad and horrible time in Germany of 1933. Families are destroyed because of Hitler's belief that his ethnic group is the master race. It is a time when the unthinkable occurs in one country. This is not the first time I've read about Hitler and The Third Reich. Since History can repeat itself, I can always learn more about this period.. Malice towards a fellow human being is a subject that no one book can cover completely. As one bit of hate is uncovered, another form appears somewhere else in the same vicinity. After reading about Ireland in  Only with Blood: A Novel of Ireland , I definitely wanted to read another novel by this author. Her blend of Christian literature with History is fascinating. The  novel includes moments of prayer and struggle and continued love and endurance in a time of  anxiety. This is not a novel of hate for one country or people. For me, it is a cautionary tale for all mankind. Wit

  Therese Down is one of my favorite International Christian authors. Aware of her power to make History come alive, I had not read her poetry. This is one of her poems that spoke to my heart. One that I will read and reread once again. John 4: 15: The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” An ordinary day. Wake late. Usual tomb-close gloom. Striped split of light, stale meat stink on my tongue. Him, still sleeping but the snoring just a goat snort now, not the camel calls of younger hours. I twist my hair into a snake and wind it round itself, stoop to grasp the pitcher, grudge into sandals, tread through dust, push the door onto more dust, swat stares like flies. Now I only burn beneath sun. A man is sitting on the well. It’s too early for the up down eyes, tongue dart through bearded lips. I smell. Haven’t washed the sweat away or him. I just wanted water. Wasn’t planning on living fore

" H edda Schroeder had no reason to doubt she was content and no idea that Berlin in 1933 was becoming a very dangerous place for thinking people. Her father was extremely wealthy. Her mother wafted about their magnificent nineteenth-century house in the salubrious Tiergarten district in a state of agitation, as though she just knew she'd left something somewhere." http://www.rosecityreader.blogspot.com It's a strange time in Germany, 1933. All hell is about to break loose. People like Hedda Schroeder have no idea what will happen. Neither have they experienced what will come. So, life goes on until....This Historical novel is definitely making me think and to remember never to take peaceful times for granted.

I have a favorite character from Everything Brave Is Forgiven by Chris Cleave. Little Zachary is one of the many children who is sent somewhere safe during the bombing and hard times of England. Sadly, Zachary loses touch with his dad and his home and must face the ugliness of racism at such an early age. Chris Cleave puts, it seems, his whole heart into this character and the other children too. Zachary is so innocent. He is Black. His new friends, white, also face a new situation. Who is this child who looks so different from themselves? Their questions to Zachary were painful for me to read. Zachary answers their questions as best as he can without a shred of anger. Zachary's attitude might seem too goody two shoes or angelic. I don't think so. Like grown-ups all children do not face strange, new situations with anger. However, this attitude could change later as a child grows up. I don't want to give away all of my feelings or the plot in the novel. I just wanted to

The trouble is, you can never take That flower from Billie’s hair. She is always walking too fast and try as we might, there’s no talking her into slowing. Don’t go down into that basement, we’d like to scream. What will it take to bargain her blues, To retire that term when it comes to her? But the grain and the cigarettes, the narcs and the fancy-dressed boys, the sediment in her throat. That’s the soil those petals spring from, Like a fist, if a fist could sing. poets.org/poetsorg/poem/gardenia   cafleurebon.com/cafleurebon-gardenia-and-tiare-in-perfumery  

Death comes alive in "Everyone Brave Is Forgiven" by Chris Cleave." It is World War II in Britain. No one knows how long a friendship will last or not last at this time. Everything is changing. Like old people use to say, "here today and gone tomorrow."  I think of  understanding one another, the intimacy of conversation and the pure beauty of romance. During such wretched times like war, I think we must love one another with a deeper love. Simply because time is like the wind. You can't see it, but you will experience it if it disappears too quickly. It's rough, ragged like a roaring ocean.  Love past, love gone and the wonder of memories. Perhaps, this is one of the themes I would like to focus on while reading this novel.