Guest Editor, Summer 2023 - Vaseem Khan.June 2023 Book Club Recommendation: When Things Are Alive They Hum by Hannah Bent.And the power of bloodlines.I have two other Chevalier novels already, and I look forward to reading them. I am willing to admit that people who belonged together in the past being reunited in the present is a very attractive and romantic premise that I would like to think is possible. In the big picture, I did really enjoy the mysterious connection of the past and the present, and I especially liked the pacing of the short passages back forth at the climax of Isabelle's story and Ella's discovery of the evidence. In the historical parts, I have read other authors who would have spent more time explaining the religious conflict, both in the historical context and within the interplay of the characters themselves. She seemed in some ways the stereotype of the ugly American, despite all her efforts and desires to fit in. Ella was really very whiney at the start. The premise and the story were interesting, but I have to admit I found the present day characters more difficult to enjoy than the 16th century ones. Issues sounds bad and I don't mean it that way. I suppose I really mean 3.5 as there are a couple of issues that kept me from going to 4. Old ways follow them there, however, and Isabelle's final shocking fate lies undiscovered - until Ella Turner's arrival four centuries later… Read more Bartholomew in Paris sends waves of persecution throughout France, and the Tourniers are forced to flee their home near Le Pont de Montvert for a new life in the Swiss town of Moutier. When she becomes pregnant, she has no choice but to marry into the powerful Tournier family.
16th-century peasant Isabelle du Moulin, known as La Rousse for her red hair, is suspected of witchcraft and tormented for her association with the Virgin Mary even after she and the rest of the village have converted to the “Truth” – the new Protestantism as preached by Calvin’s ministers. Ella’s research takes her to the Cévennes, isolated mountains in the south and the birthplace of the Tournier/Turner family. Haunted by sleepless nights, bewildered by her unwelcoming neighbors, Ella tries to forge a bond with her new home by investigating her French ancestors, with the help of seductive librarian Jean-Paul. Instead she is disrupted by less-than-idyllic village life and strange dreams of the color blue. When American Ella Turner moves with her husband to Lisle-sur-Tarn, a small town in southwestern France, she hopes to qualify to practice as a midwife as well as to start a family of her own.
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