I concentrated on my writing in August, to the detriment of my reading; however, I did read two interesting and very different books.

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P.S. I Forgive You: A Broken Legacy, by D.G. Kaye

In this memoir, D.G. Kaye writes about how difficult and painful it was to grow up with a narcissistic mother. Everything was always and only about her mother, so Kaye grew up knowing that she could never be good enough to gain her mother’s praise.

Kaye writes about how she and her siblings coped in different ways through the years and then handled the situation differently when they reached adulthood. Kaye struggled to make her decision to estrange herself from her mother, but as her mother’s death approached and came to pass she had to deal with that decision all over again.

Kaye loved her mother, but she eloquently writes about how difficult it was to live with her and under her lingering influence.

P.S. I Forgive You: A Broken Legacy is not an easy read, but I highly recommend it.

For people like me, who had a wonderful mother who always put her children ahead of her own desires and needs, I found it jarring to read about Kaye’s experience.

I was fortunate beyond all measure in my childhood home life.

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The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, by Kristin Harmel

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, by Kristin Harmel was the August pick for the Rocky River Readers Book Club. It created lots of good discussion. The moral question presented by this novel is whether it is ever all right to steal.

Intrigued?

The book’s protagonist, Colette Marceau, was born in to a family of jewel thieves. The catch, is that her mother told her that they were descendants of Robin Hood and, therefore, their thievery was justified in that they used the proceeds for good causes.

Specifically, Colette dedicated her life to stealing jewels from Nazis and Nazi sympathizers and putting all the money gained from those jewels to build and maintain a Holocaust museum/center.

The story revolves around the disappearance of her sister along with her sister’s half of a butterfly bracelet. Colette had the other half. In her later years, Colette set out to find her sister’s half of the bracelet and determine who killed her.

The story becomes very complicated as everyone is not who they claim to be, there are familial connections you won’t see coming, and was the body retrieved from the river actually Colette’s sister… or did she survive World War II?

All the loose ends are tied up in the end, and some of them will surprise you.

Janet

Never take your right to read for granted.