Story Circle Book Reviews

Beth Ricanati is impressive. An Ivy League graduate, a practicing medical doctor, a mother, a wife, a writer, a clinician at prestigious hospitals, she presents as super-woman. Even as she describes sneaking glances at her Blackberry at a mother-and-child Hebrew class, we know she has it all, right? […]

These poems from Amy Hale Auker will dispel any notions of ranch life as escape. The hard work of daily living rings through again and again. But also coming through is Auker’s intimacy with nature, seen in animals, vegetation, and weather in the sweeping openness and isolation of […]

From the ironic epigraph to the 626th page, this monumental work held my attention. Caroline Fraser’s work provides not only a deep study of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, but a fuller understanding of the entire prairie pioneer experience in details supported by 2,074 footnotes. The ironic epigraph? “The […]

Fights for equality are a part of American history. Future generations, though, won’t know about the more obscure ones without books like Sarah Rickman’s biography, B.J. Erickson: WASP Pilot, which tells the story of women pilots serving the USA during World War II. WASP pilots were the Women’s Airforce […]

I am a memoirist and a quilter whose how-to-write-poetry books are tucked into a corner of my bookcase, rarely used. Their condition well-matches my skills in reviewing poetry. Yet years ago, I fell in love with Smallwood’s writing in her fiction novel Lily’s Odyssey, and have read her subsequent […]