Tag Archives: book review

by | July 6, 2026 · 6:00 am

The Women Before Us: My Review of Amy Bess Cohen’s Latest Family History Novel

The Women Before Us is the fourth family history novel by Amy Bess Cohen. Like the three previous books, this one is very loosely based upon Cohen’s ancestors. As a genealogist and family history blogger, Cohen has completed the mountains of research necessary to delve into the lives of these people. But Cohen doesn’t leave it at the usual pedigrees and timelines. Her research leads her to explorations of personality and motivation. She does this in her books and on her blog.

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

This time, Cohen focuses on the lives of the women of three generations of Jewish women and how their lives are determined by who they marry. This can lead to happiness or it can lead to misery. The book is shaped by the experience of 18-year-old Edna Schwartz who travels from her home in Santa Fe to Philadelphia to visit her aunt in 1922. Against her mother’s hopes, Edna meets her future husband so far from home.

Within Edna’s story we learn the stories of her mother Harriet, Harriet’s German mother Hava, both who left their mothers behind to move with their husbands. We also learn the story of Edna’s (future) mother-in-law Mae who experienced the same displacement. As readers, we witness what these women learn from leaving behind their support systems.

Throughout the book, as suspense builds, there is subtle but consistent foreshadowing that perhaps Edna’s marriage will not be as successful as those of the women who came before her. There is a Jewish tradition to bestow the name of a deceased ancestor on a new baby. Edna and her husband break that tradition, and it seems another clue that things will go wrong. Is it the new age? The mores of a brash young country versus their religion training? That Edna and James are too reckless? That James is spoiled? Ultimately, the true damage to Edna’s marriage is something out of anyone’s control.

The brains of this book is the way it demonstrates how dependent women were on their marriages. These women were not Orthodox Jews, but like all women of their time, they had little chance of a life outside of marriage. And who they married dictated whether their lives would be hard or less so, happy, or even unsafe. The heart of this book is Edna’s mother-in-law Mae. I finished the book, hoping that in the fictional future of the story, one of Edna’s children will name their child after Mae, a strong, kind, maternal, industrious, intelligent woman who does what she must do for her family.

I finished the last page at night and fell asleep soon after. All night I dreamed about the book, the characters inhabiting every dream I had. Edna, Mae, James, Harriet, and the others. It’s hard to believe that these are not Cohen’s actual relatives, but these fictional people were touched with the magic of Cohen’s sympathetic understanding of her own grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

ORDER THE WOMEN BEFORE US

Amy Bess Cohen’s other books:

Amy Bess Cohen Books

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by | July 3, 2026 · 9:55 am

Scrap’s Ebook Now on Amazon!

Great news about Scrap! You can now order the ebook on Amazon!

Sorry for shouting! I’m just excited. Here’s the link:

ORDER SCRAP IN EBOOK

ORDER SCRAP IN PAPERBACK

If you haven’t read Scrap: Salvaging a Family I hope you will. And if you have, I hope you like it and will share with others who might like it or find it helpful, especially with generational trauma, family dysfunction and abuse, or writing outside the boundaries of genre.

If you’ve written a review for Scrap and are on BookBub, the book will show up there soon–it’s pending approval. I’d appreciate it if you could copy your review over there!

Years ago I was writing posts inspired by the Dawn Raffel book The Secret Life of Objects.  My magical music box, one of the objects, has shown up in Scrap. I still own it, too! Actually I wrote about it twice on this blog. The first time was to introduce the music box. At that time I didn’t know what music it plays. The second time was after I discovered the song it plays: La Paloma.

Magical Music Box

The Origin of Poetry

You know what I just realized? I’ve never let Hudson hear or even see the music box. He spent the night last weekend and then was here all day yesterday because school was closed. He’s almost 2.5. Can you believe it?!

I’ll have to share the music box with him. He loves music, and I want him to experience it as I did.

Yesterday we went to storytime at the library (lots of exercise for Grandma as story is more like “story” called movement), got lunch with chocolate milk, swam (with Grandpa), played with Mickey Mouse playdough (his favorite character is not the usual for kids today–it’s Minnie Mouse!), played the piano, and painted. Of course painted. He insisted and kept bringing it up. He paints with acrylics on canvas so it’s quite a mess. But another beautiful painting was added to his portfolio.

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by | June 24, 2026 · 10:31 am

The Economy of a Poet

Like so many, I feel a real affinity for the poetry of Sylvia Plath. She’s my favorite poet as Shirley Jackson is my favorite prose writer and Remedios Varo is my favorite artist.

For my MFA explication I wrote about the Plath poem “Fever 103.” I still love that poem which so well captures that feeling of having a high fever without really talking about fever or being ill.

For my PhD dissertation, each chapter was focused on one female poet and one type of identity. For my Plath chapter I wrote about performing gender.

Later, when I began to write more poetry, I could feel the influence of Plath’s poetry on me.

Most inspirational for me was how candid and direct her poetry sounds. And under the surface, I suppose, was her search for who her father was and how he connected to her. These features really guided me in writing Scrap: Salvaging a Family. But they also helped in creating this collage for Raw Lit, Issue 9. The Making of a Daddy which relies upon the imagery from two poems Plath wrote about her father: “Daddy” and “The Colossus.”

***

“Spare, precise, and quietly devastating, this is the kind of memoir that stays in the body long after the reading is done.”

That’s what the editorial review at The Book Review calls my memoir.

The Book Revue – 5 Star Review

Here’s another favorite paragraph:

“Her prose has the economy of a poet who knows exactly which word is doing the work and which ones can be cut. She has a remarkable ability to locate enormous emotion inside small, specific objects and moments, a trait that is genuinely rare and that gives the book its distinctive texture.”

ORDER SCRAP IN EBOOK OR PAPERBACK

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by | June 8, 2026 · 3:41 pm

A Fedora Stand and Antique Photographs

Anthony Avina has published a guest post on his blog. I wrote about the time period of my memoir Scrap: Salvaging a Family and included anecdotes and photographs (antique or nearly so) not found in the book. Fedora stand explanation is found in the guest post!

GUEST POST BY LUANNE

I hope you enjoy reading about some of what didn’t make it into the book itself.

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Perry’s ashes were hand delivered to us by the cremation company. I cleared off a shelf to store them, his photo, and the picture book I used to read him every day when he was in the shelter.

Lily now lives alone on the kitchen side of the house with Sloopy Anne on the bedroom side. I wonder if Lily now regrets being so mean to Sloops because she’s suffering from loneliness and grief. I had to take her to the vet yesterday (yes, she has an urgent care open on Sundays) and get her fluids and Gabapentin because she wasn’t eating or pooping. She’s doing a little better with much TLC from the Gardener and me.

It’s my turn to sleep on the couch with her tonight because last night was the Gardener’s turn.

 

 

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by | May 20, 2026 · 7:07 am

Merril’s Review

A big thank you to Merril D. Smith for her heartfelt review of my memoir Scrap:Salvaging a Family.  

MERRIL’S REVIEW OF SCRAP

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by | May 19, 2026 · 6:00 am

Review of Joy Neal Kidney’s The Immigrant and the Outlaw

I am excited to share my review of Joy Neal Kidney’s new book,  The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland.

BOOK DESCRIPTION

For years, Joy Neal Kidney carried a story she felt called to tell—a World War II family history marked by love, courage, and devastating loss. In the process of writing that story, she discovered something more: a gift for telling true American stories.

Beginning her freelance career in her forties, Joy went on to publish dozens of narratives in newspapers, magazines, and through the popular podcast Our American Stories. What started as a single story became a calling—to preserve the voices, memories, and moments that might otherwise be lost to time.

The Immigrant and the Outlaw gathers some of her most compelling work—stories rooted in Iowa soil yet echoing far beyond it. These are tales of grit and heritage, of war and family, of sacrifice and resilience. Stories of ordinary people whose lives reveal the quiet heroism woven through everyday American life.

Both deeply personal and richly historical, this collection offers a window into the heartland—and into the life of a writer who learned, story by story, how to tell what matters most.

These are stories worth remembering.

Available from Amazon.com in paperback, hardback, and ebook. If you’d like an autographed paperback copy of any of these book, Beaverdale Books (515-279-5400) will ship them.

ORDER FROM AMAZON

MY REVIEW

I just finished reading Joy Neal Kidney’s new book The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland and can’t wait to tell you about it. What a delightful compilation of nonfiction stories Joy has written over time for newspaper and radio readers and audiences.

These stories evoke all the nostalgia of growing up in the heart of America in the 20th century, researching and appreciating one’s roots and investing in new generations of family and newcomers alike, such as the Bosnian immigrants Joy befriended with all her love and much of that limited resource, her time. Her story about the Bosnian child who insisted on creating the family’s first Thanksgiving dinner in fifth grade brought tears to my eyes.

Joy’s style is personal, direct, and often very lyrical. The reader really gets a feel for the amazing woman telling her stories. She is so observant and in tune with the natural world but always remembers her obligations to the humans around her.

I have so many favorite stories that it’s hard to narrow down what to highlight. “Thunderstorms and Quiet, Spring Rains” is a beautiful meditation on rain, which Joy loves. Even if you prefer sunny days, you will fall in love with rain by reading Joy’s piece. By reading her story about lilacs, I could smell them near me although I live far from any lilac bushes. This made me so nostalgic for the lilacs at my old house in Michigan and, even farther back, for the ancient shrubs behind my great-grandfather’s farmhouse

Joy wrote about discovering her great-grandmother’s unfinished wonky quilt. She dismantled it and reassembled the quilt in homage to her ancestor. This is a metaphor for Joy’s stories. She takes all the bits and pieces of family stories, witnessed events, and research and shapes them into attractive literature that warms the reader. After you read The Immigrant and the Outlaw: A Collection of Stories from America’s Heartland, you will want to gift copies to friends and family. Just wait and see.

 

 

 

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by | May 18, 2026 · 6:00 am

Best Friends!!!

Once my memoir was published I felt free to think over my life again, mind unfettered by writing about it, and it occurred to me how important female friends have been to me.

I’m not one to generally enjoy hanging out with a group of women unless I am actual friends with each of them. Once there is anyone else in the (small) group who I don’t know it becomes more difficult for me. I’ve written before about being a Highly Sensitive Person. Maybe it’s just introversion. Or social anxiety. My ADHD. Or maybe I’m on the spectrum–there are certainly enough autism “tests” available online that would put me there. (Seriously, I think this is really unfair to people with real autism). Anyway, I prefer my friends one on one. That way I can focus on that person and not feel sidetracked and overstimulated by too much going on.

I had a best friend in first grade. Her name was Michelle, and we were both the best readers in our class. She was fun and smart and had an older sister so Michelle was a little old for her age. She even had a Chatty Cathy doll that talked. Or was it a Betsy Wetsy who wet her pants? We got split up in third grade, and I made two new friends, but I wasn’t close to them as I was to Michelle, whereas it appeared to me that Michelle went on to make lots of best friends in her class.

After we moved, I met Jill. We both loved to read mysteries and Gene Stratton Porter books which were wonderful for the approach to nature, but had some virulent racism in them. Nobody was monitoring our reading! We played in the woods and collected what we found. Jill not only was in my fourth grade class, but she was in my Sunday School class as well.

But then we moved again. The friend I met that first week in the new house was the girl next door. She is the first friend who shows up in Scrap. She is one of the only characters in the book where I changed her name and called her Ellen. The reason I did that is because Ellen died at age nineteen of ovarian cancer. Her stepbrother is also in the book, and he also died too young. I don’t know why I made this decision, but somehow I know it’s because of Ellen’s death. Although by the time she passed, we had already moved away again and had gone to different high schools. Ellen attended my wedding, but we were no longer close. I ended up seeing her a few weeks before she died, when she was looking for a suitcase to take back and forth to the hospital. Then I went to the visitation at the funeral home, a very distressing event.

Ellen’s sarcasm and sharp wit helped me get through some difficult 10-12 year old times with my father. She spoke up to my father, something he was not used to. And she was a bit of a wiseacre. But in the years we were apart, Ellen changed completely and became what I thought of at the time as a goody-goody, dressing very modestly (in the early 70s!), carrying a tiny mom-style purse on her forearm. But did this happen because of the cancer? I have her senior picture still, taken before she got sick. In it, she’s beautiful, her long brown hair thick and wavy, her eyes sparkling.

Best friends take on the world!

The next best friend that shows up in Scrap is Randi. We are still friends although we live in different states. Randi and I were in all our classes together all through junior high because our school was “tracked” and there was only one class of our track. Randi and I became inseparable and pulled off some pretty weird capers, even after I had moved to a different high school, such as secretly driving 150 miles away to see a boy I had a crush on who had moved. If my parents had known!!! But they didn’t. Randi was always there for any silliness I could concoct and always had my back. I couldn’t have gotten through those years without her.

All of my female friends have been important to my development as a person and also as a writer. They have been a saving grace of my life.

This leads me to this: I had a LOT of help writing this book. Any book that takes 18 years to come to fruition has either sat there doing nothing most of the time or has been kicked around and around and around. Scrap is the latter. So many people–friends and strangers–have had a hand in Scrap that when I thought of writing a thank you to go in the book, I had one panic attack after another. What if I forgot someone at the time I was writing it? After all, memories come to us in fits and starts. They don’t rest at the front of our minds all the time. Not enough room!

Finally, I decided to skip the public thank you because it was too overwhelming. But if you helped me with this book don’t think for one moment that I don’t think of you often and of the help you gave me.

And thank you if you read it recently or are reading it now. You can’t imagine how much it means to me to share this story that’s been brewing for many decades!!!

PURCHASE SCRAP: SALVAGING A FAMILY

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A few recent links:

My guest post about the process of writing Scrap at True Book Addict

True Book Addict

A review of Scrap and several excerpts from the book at Storyteller Poetry Review

Storyteller Poetry Review

A new ekphrastic microstory at The Hoolet’s Nook (nothing to do with Scrap)

The Umbrella at The Hoolet’s Nook

This link is the photograph that inspired the story.

THE UMBRELLA PHOTOGRAPH

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Tour Schedule for Scrap: Salvaging a Family (memoir in flash):

March 21: Joy Neal Kidney (review)

March 23: Liz Gauffreau, (review)

March 24: Marie Ann Bailey, (review)

March 25: John W. Howell, (excerpt)

March 30: Miriam Hurdle, (companion story)

March 31: Review Tales (review)

April 2: the bookworm (review)

April 9: Ashley’s Books, Cozy Home Delight (review)

April 13: What’s That Book About (guest post)

April 15: Tabi Thoughts(review)

April 23: Lavender Orchids (review)

April 27: The Reading Bud (review)

May 4: Chelsea’s Books (review)

May 4: Smorgasbord (excerpt)

May 6: Brotman Blog (review)

May 7: The Reading Bud (interview)

May 14: True Book Addict (guest post)

May 15: Storyteller Poetry Review (review and excerpts)

May 19: True Book Addict (review)

May 21: The Book Connection (review)

May 26: Author Anthony Avina (review)

May 28: Author Anthony Avina (guest post)

Follow the tour with the hashtag #ScrapSalvagingFamily

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by | May 6, 2026 · 6:19 am

Genealogy Sort Of in Scrap

My friend Amy at Brotman Blog who writes engaging and well-researched historical novels has written a fabulous review of Scrap: Salvaging a Family. While you’re over at her blog, check out her in-depth, thorough, and fascinating blog posts constructed through her genealogical research.

Here is an excerpt of Amy’s review:

Have you ever picked up a book, not knowing what to expect, and become so wrapped up in the story and the writing that you just don’t want to put it down? That was my experience  reading Luanne Castle’s newest book Scrap: Salvaging a Family. From the first page until I finished it, I was spellbound.

The link can be found here:

AMY’S BROTMAN BLOG

Amy and I met many years ago on WordPress through her Brotman Blog and my family history blog, The Family Kalamazoo. At the time I began that blog, I had already been doing a lot of genealogical research on my mother’s family. It was fun because my grandfather had given me a large collection of old family photos and also because Dutch records are possibly the easiest ones in the world to research.

It was not at all so easy to research my father’s family. I had no information about my father’s father until Dad finally told me where I could find his name and profession (this is all in Scrap and a lot more interesting haha). Then I could really start to research in earnest. I describe what I know in my memoir. I ended up taking a DNA test to try to match family of my father’s father. Read the book 😉 to see how that went.

My paternal grandfather is well represented in Scrap as a thread of the book really is my “search” for the man. Before he passed away, my father’s twin, my Uncle Frank, gave me a photo of their father that I had never known existed. This image has been colorized by an artist and shows me why my hair began to turn gray when I was 26 . . . .

Tour Schedule:

March 21: Joy Neal Kidney (review)

March 23: Liz Gauffreau, (review)

March 24: Marie Ann Bailey, (review)

March 25: John W. Howell, (excerpt)

March 30: Miriam Hurdle, (companion story)

March 31: Review Tales (review)

April 2: the bookworm (review)

April 9: Ashley’s Books, Cozy Home Delight (review)

April 13: What’s That Book About (guest post)

April 15: Tabi Thoughts(review)

April 23: Lavender Orchids (review)

April 27: The Reading Bud (review)

May 4: Chelsea’s Books (review)

May 4: Smorgasbord (excerpt)

May 6: Brotman Blog (review)

May 7: The Reading Bud (interview)

May 14: True Book Addict (guest post)

May 19: True Book Addict (review)

May 21: The Book Connection (review)

May 26: Author Anthony Avina (review)

May 28: Author Anthony Avina (guest post)

Follow the tour with the hashtag #ScrapSalvagingFamily

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by | May 4, 2026 · 7:50 am

SCRAP available at publisher as EBOOK!

Last night the gardener and I got back from visiting my mother in Michigan. As soon as I pull it together and maybe get a little sleep, I’ll letcha all know how it went.

Good news for some, especially if you live outside the United States! SCRAP is now available as an ebook on the publisher’s website.

SCRAP EBOOK

 

Today, Scrap: Salvaging a Family is featured on Sally Cronin’s Smorgasbord! A huge thank you to Sally!

You can find it here:

SCRAP AT SMORGASBORD

I came home with some more old photos from my mother. Here are pix I found of the cottage that is found in SCRAP. I wrote about it here:

The Cottage in SCRAP

The grass on the ground shows me that this was taken years after we first moved to the lake for the summers. I think this was when the cottage was finally demolished.

 

Tour Schedule:

March 21: Joy Neal Kidney (review)

March 23: Liz Gauffreau, (review)

March 24: Marie Ann Bailey, (review)

March 25: John W. Howell, (excerpt)

March 30: Miriam Hurdle, (companion story)

March 31: Review Tales (review)

April 2: the bookworm (review)

April 9: Ashley’s Books, Cozy Home Delight (review)

April 13: What’s That Book About (guest post)

April 15: Tabi Thoughts(review)

April 23: Lavender Orchids (review)

April 27: The Reading Bud (review)

May 4: Chelsea’s Books (review)

May 4: Smorgasbord (excerpt)

May 6: Brotman Blog (review)

May 7: The Reading Bud (interview)

May 14: True Book Addict (guest post)

May 19: True Book Addict (review)

May 21: The Book Connection (review)

Follow the tour with the hashtag #ScrapSalvagingFamily

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by | April 27, 2026 · 7:49 am

The Biggest Historical Event of My Childhood

Lavender Orchids has published a review on Instagram. Here is the start of it:

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A copy of the newspaper we received at our home about President Kennedy’s assassination

 

President Kennedy’s assassination was the biggest news of my childhood and happened when I was in third grade. It’s the one event that touched the lives of every child. In my case, we got let out of school early, but didn’t know why. I remember waiting outside for the school bus, wondering what in the world was going on.

On the bus, we got the scoop from the oldest boys on the bus, the older twin brothers of my friend Vivian. They had a transistor radio and were listening to the news. I could see from their excited faces that they loved being the ones to share the awful news with our tender little minds and hearts. After all, they were in SIXTH grade.

At one point in Scrap: Salvaging a Family, I tell the story of what happened when I got home that day, as well as what happened to me on the day of President Kennedy’s funeral.

Tour Schedule:

March 21: Joy Neal Kidney (review)

March 23: Liz Gauffreau, (review)

March 24: Marie Ann Bailey, (review)

March 25: John W. Howell, (excerpt)

March 30: Miriam Hurdle, (companion story)

March 31: Review Tales (review)

April 2: the bookworm (review)

April 9: Ashley’s Books, Cozy Home Delight (review)

April 13: What’s That Book About (guest post)

April 15: Tabi Thoughts(review)

April 23: Lavender Orchids (review)–on Instagram

April ?: The Reading Bud (review)

May 4: Chelsea’s Books (review)

May 4: Smorgasbord (excerpt)

May 6: Brotman Blog (review)

May 7: The Reading Bud (interview)

May 14: True Book Addict (guest post)

May 19: True Book Addict (review)

May 21: The Book Connection (review)

Follow the tour with the hashtag #ScrapSalvagingFamily

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