Home Fires and Spitfires - Daisy Styles

This book was lent to me by a friend who knows I've an interest in things WWII related.  Following the midwives and mothers-to-be of a Lake District Mother and Baby Home is an interesting premise, although aligning the story to Call the Midwife is a very big stretch in my opinion. Anyway, my interest was piqued enough to spend a solid period of time reading it, and on the whole I enjoyed it.

The girls who find themselves at Mary Vale Mother and Baby Home are each interesting, especially Zelda, a Jewish German refugee who arrives at the Home starving and traumatised after fleeing Nazi Germany when her husband is shot in the street for being Jewish.

Diana is pregnant and planning her imminent wedding when her fiancé sets out on a secret mission from which he goes missing, and she must leave the WAAF role she loves to move across the country to have her baby.

Gracie works in the shipyards and dreams of operating the huge dockyard cranes, but when she discovers her dashing suitor is married, and she is pregnant, what direction will her life take?

Their stories are interwoven with characters introduced in the first book in the series, but this book reads very well as a stand alone novel.  There is plenty of wit and humour as well as grief and loss, and the setting is very well described.  It's very clear that the author knows this area of countryside well and describes it so that you can see it through her eyes.  

This is an easy read and I enjoyed it although the style of language used for a 1940's tale and how people are sometimes referred to (ie Harry referring to his senior officer as 'Derek')  grated here and there, as did some of the story elements for me.  

For instance Diana would have been dismissed from the WAAFs as soon as her pregnancy was known, and she wouldn't have had loose hair at work, it would have been tied or pinned back and not 'falling in a  silky curtain over her face'.  The SOE Lysanders flew from Tangmere not Duxford, pilots didn't work on the Operations Room balcony where Controllers, Tellers, Liaison, Warning and Recorders worked so Harry being 'recalled' there is highly unlikely, the mountain-rescue team mentioned by Sister Mary Paul wasn't formed until 1953, and church bells certainly wouldn't have been rung for a wedding, as their ringing during wartime was to announce an invasion. 

I also found the repeated reference to 'pouting' lips off-putting, together with some of the other descriptions of the women of Mary Vale.  At one point I checked to see if the author was female because the descriptions of the girls in the story seemed more like they'd been written by a man!

I both loved and was disappointed by Zelda's story, which felt like it had two distinct halves.  It all started very strongly and realistically.  She's introduced as a terrified, exhausted and grief-stricken Jewish German refugee who barely speaks English and is viewed with hostility and suspicion by women within Mary Vale and some of the locals in nearby Kendal. This is an interesting angle in a WWII-era novel and could have been better explored.  Yet we very quickly move to there being almost no references at all to her German accent or speech patterns.  And it seemed to me that after the trauma of losing her beloved husband and fleeing for her life and that of her unborn child the decisions she makes later on in the book are highly unlikely within the time scale described.  I'm not against the story's direction for her, just the speed at which it happens.

The Spitfires of the title and cover are noticeably absent from the story, except by association with Duxford. There are certainly some spitfire characters though!

All that said, this is a well-told story with some interesting characters.  Perhaps a little too much romance for me, but I'd while away a few more hours reading another of Daisy Styles' books.

9781405945196, Penguin

Discovering God Through the Arts - Terry Glaspey

Discovering God Through the Arts is a very accessible introduction to considering art and faith combined. As in 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know, Glaspey has produced a superb resource book which is fascinating and thought provoking.

Easy to pick up and put down, and read not necessarily in a linear way, my copy is now covered in highlights and markers. One marked passage reads: ‘The arts can help us learn how to pay attention. I’ve discovered that looking at art, listening to music or a poem, reading a descriptive passage in a novel, or viewing a film can force me to slow down, quiet my restless thoughts, and open myself to a moment of revelation. A moment when I can see the wonder in the ordinary. Because, in a very real sense, nothing is ordinary.’ This quote comes from the section headed Coming Awake: Teaching Us to Pay Attention, and the book is split into 11 chapters considering elements like Digging for Deeper Meanings, Bringing the Scriptures to Life, Awakening a Passion for Justice and Assisting Us in Prayer and Contemplation.

Liberally illustrated in colour, which you may not expect from a paperback even if it IS about art, this is a nicely designed book with strategically placed quotes among the pages and questions and spiritual exercises at the end of each chapter. I highly recommend this to a very wide readership. It’s certainly a book which will remain not only on my shelf, but also often be on my desk or coffee table within easy reach for reference or reflection.

(First published in Together Magazine, May/June21 issue)

9780802419972, Moody Publishers

Talking God, Daring to Listen - Jacki Bulman

Recently I’ve been contemplating the fact that the longer I’ve been a Christian, the less certain I am of

some elements of what that means. Reading Talking God provoked more thoughtful pondering on this subject. 

 

The book is based around interviews with eleven people, with contributors from several Christian church backgrounds as well as those with mystic or contemplative spiritual viewpoints. The reader is challenged to read each interview with an open mind, taking time to consider what each raises and seeking what we can relate to rather than immediately getting hung up on areas we disagree with or are challenged by.  That, I found, was not always easy!

 

Although this is a book largely talking about God, you may well find Him speaking to you through its pages.  We’re asked ‘Do any of us really know the absolute Truth of God? And more importantly, perhaps, do we even need to be this certain of our complete “rightness”? Can we let go a bit, and just trust in One far greater than us knowing best?’ The issue here, for me at least, is what to let go of (a bit), and why. 

 

While undoubtedly an interesting read with much to say about belief and spirituality more widely in today’s world, this is also a book which highlights big differences in Christian faith and its practice.  The struggles some experienced in explaining some of the specifics of their faith made me consider how well I understood parts of my own beliefs.  

 

Some way into the book, Jacci asks ‘How much do we fail to learn or grow when we do not listen because we are so sure only ‘our’ way is the ‘right’ way?’  This is a good point to ponder while reading Talking God.  Perhaps, in addition to considering what to loosen our grip on in terms of what and how we believe, there is room here to reach out to some different expressions of faith, and perhaps to talk to God about them in terms of our own experience of living out our faith in a way which honours Him.  

 

Like everyone who reads the book, I imagine, there were some interviews which struck me more forcibly than others.  Probably my favourite is Richard’s, and the post-interview note about his view of the cross.  I also enjoyed particularly enjoyed the illustration on perspective.  Or ‘Do all beans jump?’  My perspective may say yes they do, if I’m in a box with them.  But someone looking from above, seeing all sorts of other beans around the box but outside it, will think differently! 

 

Jacci’s boxed out comments and responses to various elements of her interviews make thoughtful reading.  She is open about some of the issues which have been raised for her by asking her questions to such a wide spectrum of people.  There were times I didn’t agree with her remarks, but they acknowledge that Jacci, like me, often finds herself without clear answers.  

 

The second section opens with a very interesting list of what each person interviewed taught Jacci through the process of their answers.  These include pilgrimage, justice, the meaning of prayer and grace, looking for fresh ways of understanding God’s universe and purpose for us, and service.  This list underlined how if we ‘listen’ rather than immediately dismiss, God can speak to us through sometimes surprising channels.  It also made me aware of much of what I had missed in the interviews!

 

Jacci then gives her own answers to the same interview questions she asked the others.  This section, which expresses some of Jacci’s faith path with its various questions and viewpoints – some quite literally! – is a brave insight into her thoughts and fears, and is at least as thought-provoking as the earlier interviews are. 

 

For the individual reader this is a book which challenges in terms of what we believe, and in some cases why we believe it. For example whether parts of how we believe and therefore act are down to cultural and historical influences.  This is also an insightful look into the wider spiritual landscape around us and what we can learn from it whether in terms of deepening our own faith and better understanding it, or understanding those who think differently to us, and how we can connect with them with respect. 

 

I found this a difficult book to read, certainly much of the first half, but it’s one I will return to, asking God to help me to listen better.  ‘Am I a Christian?’ Jacci asks the reader.  Yes, I believe that I am.  Though very much a work in progress.  

First published in Together Magazine, May/June 2021 Issue

9780745981017, Lion Books, June 2021

Along a Storied Trail - Ann H Gabhart

Kentucky packhorse librarian Tansy Calhoun doesn't mind the rough trails and long hours as she serves her Appalachian mountain community during the Great Depression. Yet she longs to find love like the heroines in her books. When a charming writer comes to town, she thinks she might have found it - is is the perfect man actually closer than she thinks?

I must admit that as well as the fact of the heroine being a packhorse librarian I was also drawn to this book by the simply beautiful cover.  As it happens, there really were packhorse librarians in the Appalachian mountains in the 1930s, and they must’ve been pretty determined and resolute people, because they were far from fair weather riders.

 

This is a refreshing read with a feisty heroine in Tansy, and some other love stories along the way.  One of which unexpectedly concerns the wonderfully irritable character of ‘Aunt Perdie’, whose solitary and spartan existence is suddenly shattered by the arrival on her doorstop of the young, desperate and pregnant Coralee.

 

Ann Gabhart writes fantastic characters.  Visiting writer Damien has just the right balance of charm and unpleasantness (is that a word?).  Caleb is loyal but hesitant, maybe to his cost.  Caleb’s ma, determined to have her own way, made me want to grind my teeth, and the transformations of Aunt Perdie and others in the story are perfectly written.  As well as the people I also liked the wonderfully-named Shadrach – Tansy’s horse.

 

The faith elements are woven through the story in a way that feels real to the people and the time period, and this faith is honed through tough times and heartaches, as well as joy.

 

An engrossing story, told believably with very well described settings and lots of interesting historical details about the work of the Pack Horse Library Initiative whose riders covered 100-120 miles per week even in winter when their boots froze to their stirrups. A fascinating insight into a part of American history I’d never heard of before.

9780800737214, Revell, Jul21 (UK)