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Book Reviews:

• Fern House: A Year in an Artist's Garden
• The Trees of Eden
• The Laying on of Hands

Fern House: A Year in an Artist's Garden
by Deborah Schenck; text by Lauri Berkenkamp
Reviewed by Lee Ambrose

Deborah Schenck was born in England. Surrounded by country gardens for much of her life, she promised herself that one day she would have a garden of her own. A photographer since her college years, she has spent much of her adult life capturing the gifts of nature on film.

Lauri Berkenkanp has written for magazines and newspapers throughout the United States and is the author of several books. Like Schenck, she resides in Vermont. In Fern House, she works with Schenck's thoughts, artwork and photographs to provide a reflective and quiet journey through the gardens and the seasons.

The 19th century home in Vermont provides the perfect enviroment to showcase Schenck's love of gardens. Fern House is a journal in words and pictures of the first year in the old home. Readers catch a glimpse of the garden complete with weeds as well as colorful blooms during each of the four seasons.

Schenck's illustrations and photographs are able to transplant the reader to the starkness of winter, the muddy Vermont spring, the bountiful summer, and the autumn kissed trees and flowers of fall.

Not only does she portray the contents of her garden with vivid, pleasing-to-the-senses detail, but she somehow manages to allow the reader to actually experience the season right along with her and her garden. Every human sense is stimulated and challenged while reading this unique book. It is impossible to turn the page without smelling the "heady scent of lilac bushes" or the fresh mint from the herb garden. I challenge the reader to not feel the autumn air or the summer's warmth. Listening through the book brings the sounds of native birds, the relaxing flow of water at the pond, and the crunch of fresh snow. Colors and textures leap off the page.

Because I have lived in Southwest Florida for nearly thirty years, I have on more than one occasion been heard to announce how much my soul longs for the change of seasons. Reading this book, savoring the descriptions and visual delights were a true gift to my soul. I came away from the reading experience feeling refreshed, renewed and in awe of nature's hold on our souls. It was the closest thing to really being "in" the seasonal changes as I have been in quite some time.

Come along with me as I highlight a favorite passage from each of the four seasons in Schenck's garden.

Winter: "The maples that line our garden remind me of old women dancing. They bow and swar and whisper to the paper birches that flank them as the wind blows through their bare branches."

Spring: "Spring seems to blossom overnight. Every morning I wake to find the world a bit greener than the day before. The apple trees are now in full bloom, their branches all but hidden under a canopy of pink and white. When the wind blows, showers of sweet-smelling petals drift in the air."

Summer: "Daisies and black-eyed susans are happy travelers, popping up everywhere where there is lots of sun. Originally prairie flowers, they are a cheerful reminder that no matter how carefully I plan my garden, Mother Nature has her own ideas about where flowers should bloom."

Autumn: "We have put the gardens to bed with a feeling just short of regret -- I'm ready to spend less time gardening for now, but I have so enjoyed this summer that it's hard for me to let it go."

Whether you are a gardener, a photographer, a journaler, or of other creative mind, this book is one to treasure and to re-read any time your soul longs to be reminded of the beauty of nature and the wonder of the seasons.

See more reviews by Lee Ambrose at Story Circle Book Reviews.

The Trees of Edeb
by Linda Dorrell
Reviewed by Lee Ambrose

Author Linda Dorrell began keeping journals at the age of sixteen. She credits the journaling process with helping her to "analyze characters, explore the emotional impact of daily life, and create a coherent narrative of experiences." The Trees of Eden is her third novel and contains much well researched history about the 1918 influenza epidemic in America, the women's suffrage movement, and many other tidbits of fact about the South Carolina area of Effingham where Ms. Dorrell lives.

As a former journalist and public relations speaker, Ms. Dorrell's stories have appeared in Southern Living, Ancestry, and Pee Dee Magazine. She has two other novels to her credit: True Believers (2001) and Face to Face (2003).

In The Trees of Eden, Ms. Dorrell explores family relationships, interpersonal dynamics, powerful historic events, and the impact of long-held secrets on families and relationships. Her characters come to life from the opening pages and by the end of the story the reader has come to feel a part of the family. Ms. Dorrell touches chords deep within by creating a story that is both real and haunting in its intensity. Many women will find they can identify with one or more of the life challenges facing Wren Birdsong, the story's main character. It is in this most personal connection that the reader embarks on a spiritual quest right along with Wren.

"Some folks spend their lives asking questions no one on earth can answer... I was contemplating these deep philosophical thoughts as I dangled my feet in the cool flowing waters of Bethel Creek...Foot dangling and pondering life's mysteries were among my few pleasures in a reality marked by incessant responsibilities, tiring burdens, and unending chores. Little did I know, that hot September afternoon in 1918 ... that in a short while I would confront questions I would never have thought to ask in a thousand lifetimes."

With these words, we are introduced to Wren Birdsong - so named because a Carolina wren lit on the windowsill moments after Wren was born. Her mother, Huldah Birdsong, interpreted it as a sign from God that Caroline Wren Birdsong was to be the newborn's name.

Wren is a spirited teen who longs to escape the backward ways of her small rural community. A recent graduate of Miss Lansdale's Academy for Young Ladies in the nearby town of Bethel Creek, Wren models her dreams for the future after the teachings of her beloved teacher, Miss Lanie Lansdale. Wren's mother often professes that she believes Miss Lanie is a bad influence on her daughter. Thus, from an early age, there are tensions tearing at the seams of the mother-daughter relationship every woman and child longs to have.

From Miss Lanie, Wren learned of the Women's Suffrage Movement and took to heart the notion that women had an inalienable right to vote. She dreamed of traveling to distant places and meeting people who upheld the place women deserved in society. Most of all, she dreamed of escaping the overwhelming burdens placed on her because she was the only girl in a family of six boys. All the while, Wren's mother had dreams of her own for Wren - dreams that meant following in Huldah's footsteps.

Huldah Birdsong was the town's 'healer' - a woman who had once dreamed of attending medical school but had been barred from doing so by parents who believed a woman's place was married, in the home, raising children.
With six young boys and one daughter and no husband (Wren's father had left them years ago and never returned) Huldah spent her days and nights ministering to the sick and infirmed with her potions, elixirs, and poultices from the garden's gifts. While Huldah was at the homes of ill folks, Wren was left to run the home and raise the boys.

Early on, the reader is given a glimpse of just how mentally unstable Huldah is as she carries on conversations with her long-gone husband and sets his nightly place at the dinner table. Wren and her brothers know that their mother's coping mechanism is not right but they are not able to help their mother face the reality of the situation.

The Great War is taking many of the men and boys from home to foreign soil. Meanwhile, another war is being waged at home -- a deadly influenza epidemic that shows no mercy and does not discriminate in its choice of victims. Entire families and towns are wiped out from an illness that seems to be unstoppable.

In less than a year, Wren takes the reader through losses of an unfathomable dimension as her oldest brother succumbs to the influenza while at the military training camp, she is raped by one of the local boys, and her mother sinks further into her state of denial.

Wren chooses to keep her own very private torture to herself because she feels ashamed and guilty. She knows that her mother will not be supportive and so, she tucks the violence that she bore deep inside and carries on with the day-to-day dealings of the family and the influenza that is destroying the whole community.

While her mother is tending to all of the community's sick, Wren is left to deal with illness in her own house. One by one her brothers all contract and fall to the deadly influenza. One by one, Wren is faced with death and dying, coffin building and burying her own family members. One by one these losses mount on top of the personal death within that comes from the rape. Wren feels broken and abandoned on all fronts.

With the seemingly unending trials facing Wren, she gives up on faith and prayer and begins to question if "paradise is only meant for others." Meanwhile, her mother becomes obsessed with re-creating the trees of the Garden of Eden. While her mother insists that she must find the "tree of Life", Wren resents the fact that her mother is more dedicated to the townspeople and the garden than to her own hurting daughter.

It is not until Wren discovers she is pregnant that she tells her mother of the rape. As one might expect, Huldah rushes to judgment and assumes that Wren has sinned. Even when Wren tells her of the rape and the perpetrator, Mrs. Birdsong insists that Wren has brought this trouble upon herself because of the actions she embraced since being schooled by Miss Lanie.

Silence and animosity abound between the two Birdsong women. Any conversation centers on the fact that Huldah insists Wren give the baby up for adoption while Wren insists she will not. It seems as though there is no reconciling these two very strong-willed women.

To share the story's ending would spoil the wonderful magic of this deeply moving work of historical fiction that addresses not only fact but also more importantly, the human condition.

Women everywhere are sure to find a bit of themselves in one of the female characters in this book. And, from this book, hopefully women everywhere will find the strength to live life and stand up to the adversities that confront them.>

See more reviews by Lee Ambrose at Story Circle Book Reviews.

The Laying on of Hands
by Brenda Rhodes Miller
Reviewed by Lee Ambrose

Meet "Miss Muchie" - an engaging character and the voice of The Laying on of Hands. So nicknamed by her Papa, Muchie's real name is Charlotte but her family has a tradition of attaching strange and unusual names to each member - names that sometimes were as interesting as the life stories of the individual. In Muchie's case, Papa said that she was his "muchie sweet girl."

Through Miss Muchie's recollections, readers are transported to the Mississippi and Alabama of the 1920's through the 1950's. Miss Muchie, her Papa, and her grandmother "Tyler Mama" have the gift of healing. People for miles and miles come to their home at all hours of the day and night seeking the healing powers of Papa and Tyler Mama. Muchie is certain that she wants no part of these healing powers and resists giving in to them at every opportunity until Muchie is about thirteen and Tyler Mama insists she learns to birth babies.

This is a story of love, hope, faith, life and death. It is also a glimpse into the sometimes-misunderstood realm of "healing" with the most basic of natural commodities -- hands and herbs. Tyler Mama teaches Muchie her homespun remedies during the house the two spend in the herb cottage behind their house. She has a potient or an ointment to heal almost any ailment - "To treat the ills that the flesh is heir to," she'd explain. But it is her record of never having lost a mother or baby during childbirth that makes Tyler Mama most proud.

Papa never takes any credit for his healing gifts. Knowing that many so-called healers blamed illness on spells and curses and then offer spells or charms as a way of healing, Papa was quick to say that he believed that most sickness came from the way people worked, ate and lived. He would often tell those who came to him for help that "Healing doesn't come from me, it works through me plain and simple. After I have done all that I know to do, I lay hands on the sick, bow my head and pray the gift will take over and do the rest."

With gentle understanding and guidance, Tyler Mama passes her skills and knowledge on to her granddaughter despite Muchie's protests. But when Tyler Mama lies dying, Muchie is unable to save her own grandmother with those healing powers. When the gift of healing deserts her in her greatest hour of need, Muchie loses any desire to continue to heal.

Throughout her life, in the few instances where she tries to resurrect her healing gift, her hand cannot save her beloved family members and friends. This becomes Muchie's great burden to bear. After the loss of two daughters and her husband, Teddy, Muchie wants nothing to do with healing ever again.

But, when her young son Tom-Tom begins to display the same gifts, Muchie finds herself battling her own shortcomings and the knowledge that Tyler Mama would have wanted her to encourage the child to develop his gift. In the end, it is Tom-Tom who teaches Muchie about the overwhelming powers of love and faith to heal.

When I reached the last page, I was sad to say goodbye to this beautifully simple and yet intricate family and especially to Muchie who I came to feel was a friend indeed. The delightful and touching way Miller presents this story is worth savoring.

See more reviews by Lee Ambrose at Story Circle Book Reviews.