Bourbon & Chocolate

How was your weekend? Keith and I found our weekend of doing nothing close to home to be so relaxing that we plan to repeat it again this coming weekend. The farthest we ventured was three blocks to make it to the gym. The weather was absolutely gorgeous and we made an effort to spend a little time on the back porch grilling and enjoying it. But the rest of our time was spent watching the U.S. Open and catching up on some reading.

All of this quiet time at home allowed me to finish up another book. This time I read a novel, The Year We Left Home, by Jean Thompson. The book tells the story of an Iowa farm family over the course of three decades. Your introduced to the family as the oldest is getting married and the second oldest is dealing with his feelings about living in a small town and the decision to head off to college. Thompson then takes you through all four children’s stories in such a way that you learn each child’s thoughts at the different stages of their lives over the next three decades. It’s well done in this regard as you don’t have just one narrator and the story never becomes confusing or taken off course.

Sometimes you just connect with a book in such a way that it touches a piece of you inside. This is one of those books for me. Perhaps, we can attribute that to growing up in small town Kansas. I understood the mixed emotions some of the children faced having grown up where they did and the challenges it provided later into adulthood.

The Year We Left Home was nominated for several literary awards, but I’d recommend it to you because it is a good story about a family and growing older.

Have you read anything lately that you’d recommend?