1. Strangers in the Forest by Carol Ryrie Brink. In preparation for a long trip out west, (my first time ever to California), I packed up some books to travel with me. Perhaps the highlight of my trip was a day ferrying across the bay from Fisherman’s Wharf to head to John Muir Woods. The redwoods were awe inspiring, indescribable in their impact, and while there we took in a history lesson about why these giants have been preserved through the efforts of pioneer nature conservationists like Pinchot, Teddy Roosevelt, and William Kent. Lo and behold, on the flight home, these figures appeared in one of the books I had brought to continue my journey through children’s books I had never read by authors I knew and loved. This is a book for teen girls especially, about some of the pioneers of Idaho in the early twentieth century seeking to claim free land. From the first, tension builds as the conflicting motives of various homesteaders clash—those who want to own land to profit by selling the virgin pines of one of the last undeveloped beautiful valleys of Idaho, and those who are fighting against them and Washington’s politicians to preserve the precious untouched forest for future generations to enjoy. The story holds a little romance, a little historic information, a little danger and intrigue by western bad guys and money-grubbing easterners that makes a memorable tale. It’s good historical fiction about a less known side of frontier days only one hundred years ago. In the end, I’ll let you in that nature wins.
   
2.   Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. A colorful memoir of folks from my current neck of the woods who settled in a Midwestern town like the one I grew up in. Last summer all my friends were reading it and I finally reached that part of my “to be read” pile. Vance’s language and descriptions of his tumultuous upbringing are vivid, and his struggle to discover himself and his own way in the world were brutally honest. It was painful and hopeful to journey his childhood with him. Overall, I appreciated understanding my fellow man more deeply, and that is a good enough reason to read a book like this.

3. God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics by C. S. Lewis. You cannot “read” Lewis once. I have read this book before and gleaned even more this time, insights into the questions of our own day in this reading of Lewis’s answers to those of Britain’s World War II days. It is still a most relevant resource if you want wisdom for the questions that plague the people you know.

4. Destiny of the Republic: a Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard. I purposefully saved this biography for summer savoring. Her biographies are excellent. I admit knowing little of President Garfield, and now know why. He didn’t serve very long. What a man! What a president he might have made! There are so many historic characters outside of politics—Alexander Graham Bell, Dr. Lister, Frederick Olmsted. To name a few who found their way into this skillfully told tale of the man who stalked the president and those who ineptly tried to save his life. The saddest knowledge for us 150 years later is knowing that the prejudices of the American medical community prevented Garfield’s possible contributions to our country, and the comfort is in knowing that God’s providence decided otherwise.

5. On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History by Thomas Carlyle. Again, because of Charlotte Mason’s references, I found my way to this book. It was a fascinating account of heroes throughout the ages—man’s early ideas of divinity and the god Odin, of prophet through the life of Muhammad, poets Dante and Shakespeare, men of letters like Samuel Johnson and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, priest in Luther and Knox, and king in Cromwell. These representatives help make Carlyle’s claim to the necessity of heroes in our lives and their history shaping and reshaping influence. Each category was once presented in a series of separate lectures back in 1840. It is always refreshing to step back into another man’s time and see life through his lenses that viewed the same men we have come to know, and often understand differently.

For the love of reading,

Liz