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All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake

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All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake
Format:  Book, Digital Audiobook, Ebook
Who It’s for:  Adults

In the year 1850, a slave named Rose gave her nine-year-old daughter Ashley this sack the evening before they were separated by auction.  The two never saw one another again. The sack was found in 2007 at a flea market by a woman who purchased it to sell on eBay.  The woman noticed the embroidered inscription on the sack that read:

My great grandmother Rose
 mother of Ashley gave her this sack when
she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina
it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of
pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her
It be filled with my Love always
She never saw her again
Ashley is my grandmother
Ruth Middleton 1921.

Rather than sell the sack, the woman donated it to Middleton Place Plantation Museum, where it currently resides.   In 2015, author Tiya Miles heard about the sack and began her research for All That She Carried, which describes the journey the sack followed between three generations of enslaved Black women.

By researching their customs, crafts, and culture, Miles reveals not only the journey that the sack took but more importantly the experiences of the Black women who passed this object down through four generations.  Very little can be found about these enslaved women in written archives other than their names on plantation property lists.  But through intense research, Miles has succeeded in piecing their stories together and sharing them with us in her book.

If you love history, you will appreciate all that Tiya Miles shares in her book about the experience of slaves, the talents and skills that they passed on to their children, the importance of the “things” they held onto, and most all, the love for their families that they never let anyone take away from them. All That She Carried is a must-read.

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Eternal

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Eternal  by Lisa Scottoline
Format: Full cast digital audiobook
Who it’s for: Adults

Author Lisa Scottoline is best known for writing legal thrillers. Eternal is Scottoline’s first historical novel, and it is just as good as her thrillers.  The story is based on true events that took place in Rome, Italy during World War II.  In 1937, Italians in Rome never believed that they would be touched by Hitler and his unnerving rules and laws.  But when Mussolini aligned the Fascist party with Hitler’s Nazis, terrible things began to tear their beautiful city, and the people within it, apart.

Scottoline has woven the true account of Rome’s fall to the Germans into the lives of high schoolers, Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro.  The three of them have grown up as best friends.  It seems as if overnight Rome is thrust into chaos and confusion.  The families of Marco, Elisabetta, and Sandro are caught up as casualties.

Marco lands a job working for the Fascist government, supporting what his family raised him to believe in.  Sandro and his family, always loyal to Fascist Mussolini, are shockingly moved to the Jewish ghetto and lose everything.  Elisabetta is caught struggling to support herself and at odds with the love that she feels for Marco and Sandro.  As World War II rages on, its consequences destroy the lives and dreams of these three friends and their families.

Scottoline does a wonderful job of revealing the devastation of Rome at Mussolini’s hands and expressing how love, friendship, faith, and family prevail enabling people to survive terror and hardship, and eventually begin to heal.  Fans of WWII historical fiction will appreciate Scottoline’s account of the effects WWII had on Italy.

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The Invisible Woman

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The Invisible Woman by Erika Robuck
Format:  Digital Audiobook
Who it’s for:  Adults

This is a historical novel about an American woman named Virginia Hall, and her work as a secret agent during World War II.  Leading up to the war, Hall worked as an embassy secretary and desperately wanted to get into the American Foreign Service.  Not only was it rare for women to be accepted into the AFSA at the time, but rules were in place that forbid hiring people with disabilities as diplomats.  At the age of 27, Hall had accidentally shot herself in the left foot while hunting birds.  Her leg had been amputated below the knee and she wore a wooden prosthesis.

Virginia Hall eventually made her way to Europe as an ambulance driver for France, where she was recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in England.   She operated mainly out of France, where she was able to arrange contacts, assist intelligence agents, help British airmen who were shot down or had crashed over Europe, and help dozens escape France to neutral Spain and onward back to England.

After learning to become a wireless operator, Hall was contacted by the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS).  She was hired to train resistance groups in France called Maquis, so that they could support the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 with sabotage and guerrilla activities.  The Invisible Woman focuses on Hall’s work at this time (disguised as an old woman named Diane), and introduces us to the villagers, farmers, and housewives who risked their lives in support of Allied efforts.

For her efforts in France, Hall was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross in September, 1945, the only one awarded to a civilian woman in World War II.  Robuck brings to life the courage that some of the most obscure people demonstrated in order to defeat the Nazis.

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Migrations

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Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
Format:  Book
Who it’s for:  Adults

Picture a future where most animals have become extinct.  Scientists are studying how to keep those remaining from complete termination.  The answer may lie with the Arctic terns.  Franny Stone is convinced of this truth.  To prove it to herself, Franny has made her way to Greenland with the goal of talking a fishing crew into following the terns on their last migration.  If Franny can get the crew to follow the terns that she has been able to catch and tag, she is convinced that the fishermen will find the fish they desperately need to support their livelihood, and Franny will prove her theory.

Here the mystery begins.  As the crew attempts to follow the terns through frigidly calm seas and unrelenting storms, the reader learns about the dangers of daily life on a fishing vessel, and Franny’s past life. One becomes intent on trying to figure out just who Franny is and what she has left behind.  The author describes Franny in the perilous present and then shifts to the past to explore who Franny was as a child, teenager and adult.  Why are the terns so important to her?  What is Franny running from? Why was she in jail? Where are her parents? Where is her husband?  Will the crew survive their dangerous journey? Will the terns survive their migration?  Will it be their last? The listener hangs on to the author’s every word until all answers are revealed in the story’s thrilling conclusion.

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Hillbilly Elegy

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Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance
Format: Digital audiobook
Who it’s for: Adults

J.D. Vance grew up in the Rust Belt town of Middletown, Ohio.  He is the grandson of a poor, uneducated couple who left their Appalachian roots at a very young age for a better life in Ohio.

Although part of the white middle-class in Ohio, J.D.’s family could never quite escape the Appalachian stereotype described as “uneducated and prone to impulsive acts of violence”.  Life for J.D. and his family was chaotic and dysfunctional, fraught with the social problems of his hometown including alcoholism, drug addiction, and constant money problems.

J.D.’s family struggled like many working-class American families from small towns do.  But J.D. was fortunate.  He had the constant love and support of his grandmother and extended family members. J.D.’s grandmother taught him that working hard matters as well as taking responsibility for one’s choices.

Hillbilly Elegy is J.D. Vance’s story of surviving the dysfunction of white working class America to become a graduate of Ohio State University and Yale Law School.  It is his own explanation of how the Appalachian values passed down from his grandparents actually helped him survive the stigma of the poor American and taught him that if he worked hard enough, he could make it.

The audio version of this book is narrated by the author.

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Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan

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Glitter and Glue by Kelly Corrigan
Format: Book
Who It’s For: Adults

After graduating from college and working for a year, Kelly Corrigan and a good friend decided to set out on the adventure of a lifetime.  Everything was great until they began to run out of money in Australia.  Instead of asking their parents to wire them money, Kelly and her friend decided to get jobs.

Kelly took a job as a live-in nanny for the Tanner family.  The mother of the family had just passed away after battling cancer.  Kelly was responsible for taking the children to school, doing their laundry, cooking their meals, taking care of them when they returned home, cleaning up after them, and getting them ready for bed.

Glitter and Glue is a memoir in which Kelly examines her relationship with her mother while being the substitute mother for the Tanner children.  The book is heartwarming.  Kelly has a style of writing that will leave you laughing and sometimes crying.  It will leave you thinking of your relationship with your own mother and reflecting on what it means for one parent to be the “glitter” and one parent to be the “glue”.  This is a book that you won’t be able to put down.

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