Seriously, You Must Read These!

Time of the Child by Niall Williams is a book that I meant to feature at Christmas. The story is set in the 60’s in a small Irish village called Faha. While Williams has written many other books, the one he wrote before Time of the Child (This is Happiness) is also set in Faha. This isn’t a Christmas book, but it takes place during Advent, right before Christmas. It is then that a doctor and his daughter find a baby on their doorstep, very near death. They care for her and their lives are forever changed. Fans of Williams cannot say enough about his transformative writing. Curl up in front of a fire on one of our chilly days, and give the book a chance.

The Mightly Red, by Louise Erdrich, is no sleeper. The publisher has pushed this book in a mass media campaign and with good reason. Louise Erdrich is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner. A member of the Turtle Mountatin Band of Chippewa, she writes about the people and the lands of North Dakota and Minnesota. I have read two of her books and highly recommend them both, although they are not newly published: Love Medicine, 1984 and Beet Queen, 1986. The Mightly Red weaves environmental issues and the 2008 financial crash into a love triangle. Critic Michael Donkor, writing in The Guardian, says, “the novel is like a mashup of ‘The Archers’ and ‘Schitt’s Creek.'” He goes on in his review to praise Erdrich’s writing style, a voice that capture readers and propels them throughout the book.