This month's Mother Daughter Book Club choice was any book by local author Susan Fletcher. And we are all really excited because she's COMING to our book club meeting today. We're so lucky to have had two local authors willing to come visit with us this year!I chose to re-read Alphabet of Dreams, which I think is her very best book, and that's saying something, because all her books are good! She's written Walk Across the Sea, the Dragon's Milk trilogy, Shadow Spinner (my second fave of hers), and this book that is built around the dreams of young Babak.
Babak and his sister Mitra's family have been exiled and now these two, the youngest children in the family, have been separated from everyone else. Once they lived as royalty; now they are forced into living in the shadows and stealing to get by. It's not a fabulous life, an Mitra, especially, wants a change. The possibility becomes real when it is discovered that little Babak can foretell the future through dreams. This "talent" is worth quite a lot to many people, including the powerful Melchior, one of the Three Wise Men of the New Testament story.
Fletcher creates her own vision of how the journey of the Magi to Bethlehem for the birth of Christ might have happened. The story is told all from the point of view of Mitra, and is woven together through incredibly lyrical language and strong character development.
Excellent author's notes at the end of the book help the reader to understand that while this does have historical elements to it, it is a work of fiction. It also details the origins and beliefs of Zoroastrianism which I found to be very helpful. the first time I "read" this book, I actually listened to it on tape, and although I LOVED the reading o it by that particular narrator, I wish the author notes would also have been included.
A fantastic story and an Oregon Battle of the Books pick for this year. Available at the WOMS library.
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Anout the publicists' offers-- I recently posted an e mail address on my blog (just a Yahoo one), and that's how several authors and publicists have contacted me. It's one more in box to check, but it has been helpful.
I hope you post a recap of this meeting! It must be a thrill for the girls to meet the author; hopefully they'll see that authors are *real people* who like to talk about reading and writing.
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