Gravel Road Musings

  Laura Callaway is an orphan that was sent to live in Cornwall. Here she finds the culture and people different from what she was used to and she struggles to fit in and feel accepted.  She makes a hobby of looking for flotsam and jetsam along the shores where shipwrecks are quite common. I found the definitions of flotsam and jetsam interesting. Flotsam  is goods floating on the sea where a ship sunk and jetsam is anything that was purposely cast out of the ship in hopes of saving the ship. She tried to find the owners of the things she found if it was at all possible.  And one night she rescues a man who struggled to shore after a ship wrecked on rocks. But who is this man and is he really who he says is and can he be trusted? For the answers to that, you will have to read the book. This book, while classified as historical fiction, is mostly fictional, but yet loosely based on things that could have happened in that era of time. Tom Parsons, a wrecker, was a real...

 Julie Klassen is becoming one of my favorite authors. It's not that she writes super inspiring, challenging books, but she writes big fat books about the 1800's or so. These books are not filled with romance and gibberish and they are not all about wealthy people having everything and wanting more. In fact, the few books of hers that I have read are more the opposite. The wealthy have become poor. Yes, there is romance in them, but it seems to me to be a bit more on the mature side, a well thought through plot. This book is no exception. It's the second in the Tales from Ivy Hill Series and just as good as I remember the first one to be. My biggest complaint with reviewing books is I get the series so spread out that I forget what the first one was all about by the time the next one comes out. I know, it's such a hard problem to have!! The main characters in the story are three ladies who are friends making a living in an era where the well-to-do would have looked ...