August Book Club

July 30, 2012

The stories we know of our parents are stories seen through the rosy eyes of childhood, even into our adult years. The people we knew and loved as our parents were vastly different from the people they were as children, as teens, and as adults. I often wonder what my mother was like as a teen-age girl during WWII. I have heard the stories of dances at the USO, doughnut days at the train depot for soldiers deploying, and war bond drives. The stories are fond memories, but she shares little of my father’s courtship of her with us; thoughts of my mother, giggling on her first date, or of my father, nervous as he buys an engagement ring, are totally imagined and feature people that are strangers apart from the parents I know. Who can really know the true story of their parents without having some kind of glimpse into their minds to see the truth of the past?

Eileen Goudge has imagined the bitter sweetness of discovery in her novel, The Diary, featured as the Daytime Book Club selection for August. When two grown sisters discover an old diary of their mother’s in the attic, they find secrets, regrets, and hopes from the past that intertwine to lead them to the present, and a story they never knew of their mother and father’s relationship. As their mother lies dying in a nearby nursing home, they try to unravel the threads of the past to help them understand their mother better.

Please join the Daytime Book Club on Tuesday, August 14, at 2:00 p.m. as we meet to discuss this lovely novel. Copies of the book are still available behind the front desk. For further information, please contact Paula at the North Independence Branch.

Brenda N.
North Independence Branch