Summer Reading: 2023

In Afghanistan in 1978, 10-year-old Sitara spends as much time at the royal palace as she does at home thanks to her father's role as an advisor to the president. Sitara’s happy world is abruptly destroyed one night in April when dissidents storm the palace and execute the president and his family, along with Sitaras parents and younger brother. A guard saves Sitara from certain death, first bringing her to his home and then foisting her on an American diplomat named Antonia Shepherd. Antonia and her mother, Tilly, protect Sitara and plan to get her out of Afghanistan by using the identity of her older sister, Aryana, who was born in the United States and died as a baby. After several unexpected twists, Antonia ends up raising Sitara and providing her with stability and love so that she can put the trauma of her childhood behind her--until three decades later, when Sitara, now a successful oncologist, comes face-to-face with a figure from her past.

Mystery novelist Harriet Vane knew all about poisons, and when her former lover died in the manner prescribed in one of her books, a jury of her peers had a hangman's noose in mind. But Lord Peter Wimsey was determined to find her innocent.
If you enjoy this first a series of classic mysteries featuring Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey, you may wish to read some of the other titles in the series like Gaudy Night or The Busman's Holiday.

Forensic archeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway is in her late thirties. She lives happily alone with her two cats in a bleak, remote area near Norfolk, land that was sacred to its Iron Age inhabitants—not quite earth, not quite sea. But her routine days of digging up bones and other ancient objects are harshly upended when a child’s bones are found on a desolate beach. Detective Chief Inspector Nelson calls Galloway for help, believing they are the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who went missing a decade ago and whose abductor continues to taunt him with bizarre letters containing references to ritual sacrifice, Shakespeare, and the Bible. Then a second girl goes missing and Nelson receives a new letter—exactly like the ones about Lucy. Is it the same killer? Or a copycat murderer, linked in some way to the site near Ruth’s remote home.

“Margaret Lea grew up in a household of mourning, but she never knew why until the day she opened a box of papers underneath her parent’s bed and found the birth and death certificates of a twin sister of whom she never knew. It is the coincidence of twins in the life of Vida Winter, Britain’s most famous writer, that convinces Margaret to leave her post at her father’s rare-books store and travel to the dying writer’s Yorkshire estate. There, she hears a story no one else knows: who Vida Winter really is. For decades, the author has wildly fabricated answers to personal questions in interviews. Now Vida wants to tell the true story. And what a story it is, replete with madness; incest; a pair of twins who speak a private language; a devastating fire; a ghost that opens doors and closes books; a baby abandoned on a doorstep in the rain; a page torn from a turn-of-the-century edition of Jane Eyre; a cake-baking gentle giant; skeletons; topiaries; blind housekeepers; and suicide. As the master storyteller nears death, Margaret has yet to understand why she is the one Vida chose to record her tale. And is it a tall tale? One last great fiction to leave for her reading public? Only Margaret, who begins to catch glimpses of her own dead twin in the eternal gloom of the Winter estate, can sort truth from longing and lies from guilt. Setterfield has crafted an homage to the romantic heroines of du Maurier, Collins and the Brontës.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Following the critical and popular success of Woman World—the hit Instagram comic which appeared on 25 best of the year lists—Aminder Dhaliwal returns with Cyclopedia Exotica. Also serialized on instagram to her 250,000 followers, this graphic novel showcases Dhaliwal’s quick wit and astute socio-cultural criticism.

Doctor’s office waiting rooms, commercials, dog parks, and dating app screenshots capture the experiences and interior lives of the cyclops community; a largely immigrant population displaying physical differences from the majority. Whether they’re artists, parents, or yoga students, the cyclops have it tough: they face microaggressions and overt xenophobia on a daily basis. However, they are bent on finding love, cultivating community, and navigating life alongside the two-eyed majority with patience and the occasional bout of rage. Cyclopedia Exotica is a triumph of hilarious candor.” (Drawn & Quarterly)

“In this daringly structured and ruthlessly inquisitive memoir, Machado (Her Body and Other Parties, 2017) examines an abusive relationship with an eye to both personal truth and cultural assumption. The author begins with a declaration. “I speak into the silence,” she says. “I toss the stone of my story into a vast crevice; measure the emptiness by its small sound.” She is writing to record her experience of queer sexuality and intimate psychological violence; by telling her story, she's committing its existence to history. History has largely ignored the queer experience, particularly the existence of domestic abuse between queer women. As Machado points out, when you are invisible from the collective narrative, it is harder to imagine what your own feelings mean. The relationship at the heart of this memoir is resurrected with visceral potency. Instead of tracing her past with linear continuity, the author fractures it, diving into beautifully or painfully remembered moments with a harrowing emotional logic. As

Machado recounts, she fell in love with a woman who seemed wonderful—they had sex, went on road trips, met parents—but who eventually became oppressively terrifying. In other sections, the author recounts an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and illuminates the imagery of abuse in two films by George Cukor. Machado uses slippery changes in point of view and a knack for translating emotion into concrete sensation to slide readers into her space, where they experience the fear and confusion of abuse from the inside. She applies the astonishing force of her imagination and narrative skill to her own life, framing chapters with storytelling motifs (unreliable narrator, star-crossed lovers, choose-your-own-adventure) and playful footnotes…A fiercely honest, imaginatively written, and necessary memoir from one of our great young writers.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Eichar, who has shot everything from short documentaries to TV pilots, applies a documentarian’s eye to this thorough but inconclusive investigation into one of the East’s most controversial tragedies. “The Dyatlov Pass Incident” is quite famous in some circles, especially in Russia and the Baltics, but little-known outside the former Iron Curtain. In 1959, nine young hikers suddenly disappeared in the northern Ural Mountains. When the group was finally found, six had died of exposure, while three were found to have traumatic, blunt-force injuries. One girl was missing her tongue. None were fully dressed, as if they had fled suddenly in the dead of night. It was a gruesome scene, made more so by a flood of conspiracy theories. Were they murdered by the military after witnessing some kind of secret test? Was it UFOs or just an avalanche? The final report by investigators, which is murky at best, blames “an unknown compelling force.” Eichar marries the short story of the students’ lives with the procedural tale of the official investigation and then integrates his own amateur investigation. In an interesting twist, the author managed to track down Yuri Yudin, the sole survivor of the expedition, who had turned back due to his rheumatism, saving his life. Yudin, who passed away earlier this year, was mischievous with the serious young scholar: “Do you not have mysteries in your own country that are unsolved?”; “Which picture do you want to paint? The one rooted in the Revolution, or that of the Iron Curtain?” The author deftly explores theories common and uncommon, the most off-putting being an infrasonic wave known to cause hallucinations and disorientation. It’s not a revelatory portrait of the incident, but for Western readers, it’s a well-told and accurate whodunit.” (Kirkus Reviews)

“Ada’s father, David, is a computer programmer in the 1980s, and he treats Ada as a kind of program herself, homeschooling her and subjecting her to extemporaneous pop quizzes, responding to her answers only with “Correct” or “Wrong.” Those are the same commands David uses on his signature project, ELIXIR, which he is trying to teach to pass the Turing test so that it can fool an interlocutor into thinking it is human.

David and Ada build a perfect, isolated utopia for themselves, a haven of advanced theoretical mathematics and philosophy and elaborate, lovingly described home-cooked feasts. But then, tragedy: David is stricken with Alzheimer’s. He must be sent to a nursing home, and 13-year-old Ada to the home of her well-meaning neighbor. Ada struggles to adapt to the world outside David’s home, the world of canned spaghetti sauce and simple algebra classes and casually cruel teenagers. And she struggles even more as David’s new caretakers come to realize that he is not the man he always claimed to be, that his entire identity is in fact an elaborate and multifaceted lie. The mystery of David’s true identity is high-concept verging on gothic, and it becomes even more so as ELIXIR’s abilities are revealed to have taken a turn for the science fictional. But at the heart of The Unseen World is Ada’s mundane and quiet evolution as she takes responsibility for tending to her father, leaves her comfortable nest, and discovers that the world is not the safe and lovely place she understood it to be and that adults are not universally trustworthy.

The result is a slow-building coming-of-age story that is as heartbreaking as it is lovely, tragic without ever becoming sentimental, grounded but still compellingly shaded with a touch of American gothic here, a touch of speculative fiction there. And it’s all the more impressive for how lightly it wears its accomplishments.” (Vox)

“In a riveting and disquieting narrative, Kolker (Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery, 2013) interweaves a biography of the Galvin family with a chronicle of medicine’s treatment of, and research into, schizophrenia. Don and Mimi Galvin had 12 children—10 boys and two girls—born between 1945 and 1965. Religious beliefs—both parents were Catholic—were not the only reason for their fecundity. Mimi seemed to crave the distinction of “being known as a mother who could easily accomplish such a thing.” In addition, Kolker speculates, the children may have assuaged an abiding feeling of abandonment, including by a husband more focused on his career than his family. Mimi was a perfectionist who controlled every aspect of the children’s lives: chores, enriching after-school activities, and feelings, which she believed should best be repressed. Insisting that they were raising a model family, the Galvins refused to acknowledge problems, such as violent fights among the older brothers, which the parents dismissed as merely roughhousing. The other brothers felt lost, ignored, “less than safe, treated like a number and not a person.” The eldest, Donald, was the first to exhibit signs of schizophrenia, with bizarre behavior that repeatedly landed him in mental hospitals; soon, five brothers followed, all with the same diagnosis, manifested somewhat differently, including sibling sexual abuse. Meanwhile, Mimi pretended everything was normal—until she could not hide the family’s suffering. With each diagnosis, “she became more of a prisoner—confined by secrets, paralyzed by the power that the stigma of mental illness held over her.” Kolker deftly follows the psychiatric, chemical, and biological theories proposed to explain schizophrenia and the various treatments foisted upon the brothers. Most poignantly, he portrays the impact on the unafflicted children of the brothers’ illness, an oppressive emotional atmosphere, and the family’s festering secrets. By the 1980s, the Galvins became subjects of researchers investigating a genetic basis for the illness; those extensive medical records inform this compelling tale.” (Kirkus Reviews)

The winner of five Hugo awards, Jemisin is a master of her craft. In this novel, she has achieved lush worldbuilding, dynamic characters, and mesmerizing storytelling. I could not put this book down once I picked it up!

A tender and funny young adult novel, this book about finding yourself and your friends, which I think makes it a great summer read. Don’t be fooled by its lightheartedness – it still packs a lot of character and heart, like any good coming-of-age story.

This is a weird little southern gothic sci-fi book, but incredibly well-written. It explores themes of queer love, motherhood, exploitation, and self-acceptance, all wrapped up in a thrilling plot.

I was moved to tears by this historical fiction retelling of Joan of Arc. Chen’s language is so beautiful and her version of Joan is so complex. This one has become a big inspiration to me in my own writing.

Publishers Weekly: "Miller, author of the Kiki Strike YA series, triumphs with her adult debut about three women who discover supernatural abilities during menopause, which they use to avenge murdered teenage girls in the New York beach town of Mattuck. Just as retired nurse Nessa James becomes fast friends with gym owner Jo Levison, Nessa realizes she can see ghosts again. When she was a child, her grandmother told her she had a gift, and that she'd be called upon later in life to use it, along with other similarly gifted women. Nessa intuitively seeks out unapologetic Harriett Osborne, a former ad executive who was pushed out of her career and now cultivates toxic plants like wolfsbane. Along with Jo, who can summon her fury and channel it into fiery strength, the trio attempt to bring peace to three ghosts Nessa encounters on the beach near Culling Pointe, where the billionaires live. After a client at Jo's gym starts leaving clues about one of the ghosts, the trio is let down by police detectives who make their own motives clear. To say anything further would spoil this tightly plotted page-turner. Miller's book is that rare treat: a suspenseful story with great pacing, memorable characters, and an engaging voice. Fantastic in every way, this fierce anthem against misogyny is a smash."

Publishers Weekly: “This thrilling excursion into metafiction from Australian author Gentill (Crossing the Lines) wittily examines the writing process itself. Australian mystery writer Winifred "Freddie" Kincaid has come to Boston after receiving a prestigious writers' fellowship. While she's seeking inspiration in the Boston Public Library, a woman's scream breaks the silence. Freddie seizes on this incident as the ideal start for her new opus, which involves "a group of people united by a scream." Each chapter of Freddie's book includes a letter written to famous Australian author Hannah Tigone by a dedicated fan, Leo Johnson, a fellow writer in residence who offers to be her beta reader. Hannah is writing the story of Freddie Kincaid, who's writing the story of the murder in the library. Leo's emails influence Hannah's view of her characters and subsequently Freddie's story. Leo's emails shift from sycophantic to profoundly disturbing when his novel is rejected by Hannah's agent. The agent dies a few days later, and murders in the two realities begin to multiply. This elegantly constructed novel is intelligent, funny, and profound. Who could ask for more?”

Booklist: “British TV personality Osman has hit the bullseye with his best-selling Thursday Murder Club series, which is set in an upscale English retirement community. The four septuagenarian members of the club--former MI6 agent Elizabeth, chatty Joyce, psychiatrist Ibrahim, and everyman Ron--try to defrost cold cases that have confounded police. Their third adventure, which centers on the long-ago disappearance of a television journalist who was investigating a money-laundering scheme, comes with a bit of glamour and some well-known media personalities, who impact the investigation. But old dangers also resurface, as Viktor, Elizabeth's onetime KGB adversary who still dabbles in money laundering, becomes a suspect, and a new kid on the crime block, known only as the Viking, attempts to blackmail Elizabeth into shooting Viktor to get the Russian off his turf. Osman writes with a very light touch. There's almost a madcap feel to the action at times, yet he doesn't shy away from issues affecting the elderly: diminishing mental and physical capabilities, loss of image, and the feeling of time running out. Plenty of layers, but plenty of laughs, too.”

Publishers Weekly: “Abdullah's ambitious debut, the first in the Sandsea Trilogy, weaves an intricate tale that draws from the legends of One Thousand and One Nights to create something entirely new. In the sultanate ruled from the great city of Madinne, where magical jinn are persecuted on sight but still prized for their miraculous blood, Loulie al-Nazari, the mysterious Midnight Merchant, makes a living scouring the desert for jinn-enchanted relics to sell to the highest bidder. After inadvertently drawing the sultan's attention, Loulie is blackmailed by the crown to retrieve a priceless artifact from the legendary lost jinn city of Dhahab, deep within the deadly Sandsea. Accompanying her are her bodyguard Qadir, who's secretly a jinn himself; thief and jinn hunter Aisha bint Louas; and Prince Mazen bin Malik, who's been coerced into magically swapping forms with his ruthless older brother, Omar, as part of a political scheme. As their expedition grows ever more dangerous, with the group facing hazards both supernatural and mundane, their carefully guarded secrets are revealed, threatening to change the balance of power in the sultanate forever. Lush descriptions bring the setting to life, while the focus on myth and storytelling contrasted against the characters' harsh reality adds to the sense of mystery and enchantment. This powerful, intriguing adventure will leave readers eager for more.”

BOOKLIST: “Basgiath War College trains healers, scribes, infantry, or dragon riders to protect Navarre from violent invasion attempts from the kingdom of Poromiel and their gryphon riders. Violet has trained her whole life to enter the Scribe Quadrant, just like her father did. Dedicating her life to recording the war history of Navarre, rather than participating in it, fits well with her intelligence, short stature, and overly flexible joints, which leave her prone to injury. But upon her father's death, her mother, a decorated Navarrian officer, forces Violet to follow in her footsteps, and that of Violet's siblings, and join the Riders Quadrant. Once bonded, riders channel powers through their dragons, greatly increasing the likelihood of success both in the college and at war. If that wasn't challenging enough, Violet is being hunted by Xaden, a third-year cadet whose father was a rebellion leader executed at the hand of Violet's mother. Hatred will draw him close to her, but will something more powerful and alluring make separating impossible? Suspenseful, sexy, and with incredibly entertaining storytelling, the first in Yarros' Empyrean series will delight fans of romantic, adventure-filled fantasy.”

Publishers Weekly: “Dr. Zhivago meets James Bond in British author Worrall's ambitious debut. In 1941, a trio of war-orphaned teenagers escape into the forests of Lithuania, waging a guerrilla campaign against the occupying German army. Twenty years later, Greta, the lone survivor, is now an independent, capable assassin ruthlessly dispatching Nazi fugitives, while still hunting for the Russian who killed her mother and for the English double agent who betrayed her resistance network. At a chess tournament in London, Michael Fitzgerald, a Cambridge University student, falls instantly in love with Yulia Forsheva, a Russian prodigy chess master and the daughter of important Politburo officials. Their star-crossed romance is aided by Yulia's chaperone, a Soviet spymaster disgusted by the brutality of his comrades. This romance catches the attention of both Michael's father, the Director of Naval Intelligence, and Greta, who separately coerce him to spy on Yulia's inner circle, particularly the sadistic chief administrator of the Soviet nuclear weapons program and the architect of a plan that might spark a new world war. Worrall expertly weaves complex backstories and crossed narratives while vividly depicting the paranoia of everyday Soviet life, the barbarism of war, and shrewd old-fashioned spycraft. Fans of intricate Cold War--era spy thrillers will be enthralled.”

The Hidden Palace, by Helene Wecker

Wecker delivers a satisfying, mature sequel to The Golem and the Jinni, continuing the magical story of two immigrant mythological characters from the turn of the 20th century to the outbreak of WWI. Golem Chava Levy and jinni Ahmad al-Hadid renew their friendship in 1900 upon Ahmad's return to New York City. Soon, their nighttime walks lead to romance. Meanwhile, heiress Sophia Winston travels incognito to the Middle East seeking a cure to her chills, a remnant of her own brief romance with Ahmad. Toby, the young son of Chava's former co-worker Anna Blumberg, was only present in utero during the climactic events of the first book, and now has questions about Anna's past. For Chava and Ahmad, their opposite natures both attract and repel, dooming the relationship. Chava then enrolls at Teachers College, and Ahmad throws himself into his work as a metalsmith, holing up in a downtown building to create a mysterious masterpiece. New characters, including another golem and a young female jinniyeh, and historical touchstones such as the sinking of the Titanic, drive the plot. Whereas the first installment was a propulsive battle of good versus evil, this delightful entry is more serialized storytelling à la Dickens. Throughout, Wecker pulls off an impressive juggling act with the many characters, all of whom are well positioned for another sequel. - Publishers Weekly

In postwar Europe, Ian, a British war correspondent with a vendetta, and his American sidekick, Tony, have set up a shoestring operation to catch the war criminals who seem to be not just slipping, but swarming through the cracks. The same set of circumstances that led Ian to enter a marriage of convenience with Nina, a Siberian former bomber pilot, has also given both common cause: to chase down Lorelei Vogt, a Nazi known as the Huntress, who, by her lakeside lair in Poland, trapped and killed refugees, many of them children. Lorelei's mother, blandished by Tony, reveals that her daughter immigrated to Boston. Meanwhile, Jordan, an aspiring photographer living in Boston with her widowed antiques-dealer father, Dan, welcomes a new stepmother, Austrian refugee Anneliese, and her 4-year-old daughter, Ruth. Jordan soon grows suspicious of Dan's new bride: A candid shot captures Anneliese's furtive "cruel" glance--and there's that swastika charm hidden in her wedding bouquet. However, Anneliese manages to quell Jordan's suspicions by confessing part of the truth: that Ruth is not really her daughter but a war orphan. That Jordan's suspicions are so easily allayed strains credulity, especially since the reader is almost immediately aware that Anneliese is the Huntress in disguise. The suspense lies in how long it's going to take Ian and company to track her down and what the impact will be on Jordan and Ruth when they do. Well-researched and vivid segments are interspersed detailing Nina's backstory as one of Russia's sizable force of female combat pilots (dubbed The Night Witches by the Germans), establishing her as a fierce yet vulnerable antecedent to Lisbeth Salander. Quinn's language is evocative of the period, and her characters are good literary company. - Kirkus Reviews

Elinor "Nell" Glyn's life spanned eras: born in Victorian England, she witnessed the Belle Epoque in Paris, toured the front during WWI, and taught Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson how to smolder in 1920s Hollywood. Along the way, she wrote 40 books, both fiction and nonfiction, that were frank about sexual desire. Her first novel, Three Weeks (1907), about a Serbian queen who finds love and pleasure with an English nobleman, was widely panned by critics but became a global sensation—a pattern that would be repeated with almost all of her novels. By the time she arrived in Hollywood, she was a middle-aged widow but no less fabulous—she was known for her red hair, penchant for tiger-skin rugs, and dresses made by her couturier sister, Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon. The "Elinor Glyn touch" became synonymous with sex and glamour in movies, and she worked with actors and actresses who had "It," "'an inner magic, an animal magnetism.'" Hallett's biography puts Glyn's glittering influence in its historical context. It's a thoroughly readable chronicling of a woman whose influence spanned generations. - Booklist

Stone-in-the-Glen used to be a joyful, cooperative place, but a disastrous library fire ushers in an era of divisiveness and suspicion. In parallel story lines, we learn about the dire situation of an orphanage that has lost its community support and the plight of a gentle ogress who lives on the fringes of town, an outcast. At the center of the plot is an evil mayor—charismatic, manipulative, and powerful—who considers the line between truth and lies to be “fuzzy.” Offstage are dragons who are, in this world, not only benign but uniquely enlightened. A folksy, discursive first-person narrator (whose identity is the story’s final reveal) keeps the tone lighthearted, but there are some genuinely frightening scenes, such as a standoff between an angry mob and the brave orphan who tries to defuse the situation using logic and facts. She fails. Unbowed, she marshals her resources. Can a bitter, irrational, brainwashed populace be brought to the light of reason by individual kindness, libraries, a flock of supportive crows, the gift of delicious pastries, and a “serious girl with long dark braids”? In this story, Barnhill (Newbery winner for The Girl Who Drank the Moon, rev. 9/16) answers with an energetic affirmative, making it one of the more buoyant of the fictional responses to “the Dark Days of a Certain Administration” and other ills of our time. – Horn Book Magazine

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

It's been over a century since three generation ships escaped an Earth dominated by artificial intelligence in pursuit of a life on a distant planet orbiting Tau Ceti. Now, it’s nearly Braking Day, when the ships will begin their long-awaited descent to their new home. Born on the lower decks of the Archimedes, Ravi Macleod is an engineer-in-training, set to be the first of his family to become an officer in the stratified hierarchy aboard the ship. While on a routine inspection, Ravi sees the impossible: a young woman floating, helmetless, out in space. And he’s the only one who can see her. With the help of his cousin, Boz, and her illegally constructed AI, Ravi must investigate the source of these strange visions and uncovers the truth of the Archimedes’ departure from Earth before Braking Day arrives.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men. Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention", must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning. I've recommended this book to several out-of-state family and friends to give them the essence of that time period in this town.

In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn’t even have a map. But did have her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness.