Mail Time! (Jan 31, 2011)

 Mailbox Monday's host for January is Rose City Reader.In My Mailbox is hosted Sundays at The Story Siren. Please visit this posts and take a look at what packages everybody else got this week! 

Minding Ben

by Victoria Brown

"The whole thing, from start to finish, from first talk to walk off the plane, took about ten weeks total.  That was it.  Ten weeks and I went from a small village on a small island to the middle of New York City."

So begins Minding Ben, and Grace Caton's story of leaving her small village in Trinidad to immigrate to New York in search of a better life.  However, as with so many things in life, not all goes quite as planned:  Instead of limitless opportunity and an easy path to an education, through a series of mishaps Grace finds herself working as a nanny for a wealthy family, the Bruckners.  While Ben, their young son, is delightful, the demanding and humiliating work that his parents subject Grace to, for meager wages, little thanks, and promises of future aid and assistance, is nearly too much to bear.  That, coupled with the complicated playground politics among the small West Indian babysitting community and complicated relationships among her extended family and friends in Brooklyn, makes the reality of Grace's young life seem like a waking nightmare.

Minding Ben invites readers into the private world of the anonymous West Indian babysitters who have peopled the lives of so many young urban families for decades, while offering a rarely seen account of the immigrant experience in this strong, compassionate, and insightful narrative.

~I received this book from Hyperion Voice and will be reviewing in April.~

Flavors

by Emily Sue Harvey



Emily Sue Harvey's first novel, Song of Renewal, was praised by New York Times bestselling author Jill Marie Landis as "an uplifting, heartwarming story." By bestselling author Kay Allenbaugh as a work that will "linger in the memory long after readers put it aside," and by Coffee Time Romance as "a must-read book for anyong doing a little soul searching."  New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry said, "It captures your attention, and whets your appetite for more," while Peeking between the Pages called it "quite simply a beautiful book."

Now, in Flavors, this master storyteller of the human heart sweeps us along with twelve-year-old Sadie Ann Melton as she enters a life-altering season.  The summer of 1950 will change everything for her.  For in that summer, she will embark on an odyssey at once heartbreakingly tender and crushingly brutal.  At times, she will experience more darkness than she has ever witnessed before.  At others, she will thrill to lightness and joy she never imagined.  By summer's end, the Melton women in Sadie's journey - loving her, coaxing her, and commanding her - will help shape her into the woman she becomes.  And they will expose Sadie to all the flavors of life as she savors the world that she brings into being.

Filled with charm, wisdom, and the smorgasbord of emotions that comes with the first steps into adulthood, Flavors once again proves Emily Sue Harvey's unique ability to touch our souls with her unforgettable stories.


~I received this book from Pump Up Your Book Tours and will be reviewing in April.~


That's it for me this week - What came in your mailbox?