Black Woods, Blue Sky is set in contemporary Alaska where Birdie, a 26-year-old mom, is trying to forge a life for herself and her 6-year-old daughter, Emaleen, in a small town. When Arthur, a local misfit who spends most of his time alone in his remote cabin, starts frequenting the roadside lodge where Birdie works as a waitress, they strike up an unlikely relationship. And then things get strange! Louise Erdrich says, “Black Woods, Blue Sky is a fable about what it is to love, a tale of longing, a call to renew our deepest bonds with the living world. It will draw you along like a fast-moving stream, and you will find yourself in places you have never been.”

Nancy and Linny discover they read this book differently, but both loved it and its complex characters and vivid descriptions of remote and mystical Alaska.

In THE STORM WE MADE, Cecily, an ordinary Malayan housewife, beguiled by a Japanese propaganda that Asians should rule Asia, becomes a secret agent for the Japanese in 1935. Ten years later, suffering under Japanese oppression, she and her children (aged 7 to 17) try to survive the consequences of her deception. Told from the perspectives of Cecily and each of her three children, the novel plunges us into horrific settings with only bad choices to be made. THE STORM WE MADE by debut author Vanessa Chan is one of a relatively few Western novels that tells a World War II story from the perspective of the colonized rather than the colonizer or liberator.

Nancy is excited that we are reviewing a Louise Erdrich book, THE MIGHTY RED, her latest novel, published last year. Nancy read Erdrich's book, THE BINGO PALACE, a number of years ago (it was published in 1994) and really loved it. THE MIGHTY RED is a New York Times bestseller, A Read with Jenna book club pick, and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Erdrich is a contemporary American author. Many of her writings center on the Ojibwe people of the northern Great Plains. Her novels have received the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Linny and Nancy discuss the book's themes of mothers and daughters, large-scale agricultural practices, and faith and spirituality. Linny also learns a lot about sugar beets.