Gravel Road Musings

  Divided into five categories, the daily question conversation card set provides 100 questions designed to start conversations around the family table or anywhere you need some good conversation. I love this type of thing and think it would be a great thing to use when having friends over for coffee or even with your children to see what answers they come up with. This summer, Dave and I are spending hours together in the kitchen and I think it would be fun to use these questions to generate discussions that go beyond our normal conversations. The five categories are friends and family, travel, faith, just for fun, and then and now.  Let me give you some sample questions:  "Would you rather have ten close friends or one best friend? Why?" "If your house had a magic door that opened anywhere, where would you want it to lead?" "What helps you replace your fear with faith?" "You are organizing a big art museum heist. Who from your life do you pick for y...

  Set in the Appalachian Mountains during the Great Depression, Ann takes us on another journey exploring what life could have been like for those living in the mountains, this time as a packhorse librarian. Times are hard during the Great Depression and Tansy's father has left home looking for work and has not been heard from. Tansy loves books and takes the job as a librarian so she can help support her family. In spite of the inclement weather she sometimes has to go out in, she loves her job.  There are a lot of varied characters in the book and you have to love each one of them. Perdita is persnickety and cranky on the surface, but opens her heart to Coralee who desperately needs her help. I would love to describe more of the characters, but I feel like I give away too much of the story to do that. I loved the community feel in this book, the way people looked out for each other, the way they opened their home and shared what little they had to help the next person. I thi...

  This book was in the genre of historical romance and it certainly lived up to that title. I liked the premise of the book--a wealthy girl accused of stealing and ending up in a reformatory which helped to revolutionize her life. Rachel did some research on reformatories of that era and found that they were kind of a prelude to juvenile detention facilities. Then there was the quiet, socially inept dentist who was transformed. Rachel wanted to paint a dentist in a good light since she felt that so many dentists were given more of a negative connotation.  The writing was well done and the story line interesting. I thought Rachel did a good job of showing forgiveness and reconciliation, including the importance of being able to forgive one's self for their wrong actions. After spending five years in a reformatory with women from all walks of life, Hazel has a much deeper heart for "fallen women" as they were called in that day.  Over all, the story flowed almost too smooth...