By Arlene Bice
I was browsing in a bookshop while waiting for an author of a different book to appear for a book signing when I spotted “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows published hardcover in 2008.
It’s a fictional, sometimes hilarious, sometimes deeply sad account of Guernsey in the Channel Islands during World War II. It’s a year or so after the war ended when Briton Juliet Ashton is scouting around for a new subject to write a new book.
She receives a letter from Dawsey Adams who now owns and loves a book she previously owned written by Charles Lamb. Her name and old, bombed-out apartment address is written on the inside front cover. (What a great idea, like putting a note in a bottle!) But the letter finds her anyway.
He asks, “Would you please send me the name of a bookshop in London, as there are no longer any bookshops on the island.” She does and sends him a book as a gift, too. So begins a friendship through letters with him and with all the other members of the Society. Each member has a different book they’ve chosen to read and report on. All of them have their own stories of life in German-occupied Guernsey.
Through letters Juliet has her new subject, plus much more is added to her life when she visits the island to meet the folks she’s come to know through writing.
“Thunder Bay” by William Kent Krueger published in hardcover in 2007 caught my eye. I wondered if it was Thunder Bay, a city I’ve been to several times in Ontario, Canada. It was. So I just had to buy this brand new copy at the bargain price of $10. It was a good decision.
Cork O’Connor runs Sam’s Place, a hot dog place in a Quonset hut at Iron Lake in Minnesota. It’s seasonal. His teenage daughters and their friends work there when he needs them. He happily leaves the political office of sheriff behind him except that he’s taken out at Private Investigator license for those long off-season periods.
Before he gets a chance to advertise his new license, his long-time mentor Objiwe medicine man Henry Meloux seeks his favor. He asks Cork to find the son Henry sired over 60 years ago. He’s never seen the child. The only clues he can give are the mother’s maiden name and that she lived in Ontario.
Complicating factors set in at home. Cork’s daughter is pregnant, has a four-year scholarship at a good college and big decisions to make. He wants to be there for his daughter but Henry’s over 80 years old. Time is a factor.Within days of finding the son, someone tries to shoot Henry.
They can’t understand why a son might want to kill a father he never knew or why the son refuses to see him. Now they need to investigate further. With the assistance of his friend Schanno, Cork and Henry head north to the “Land of the Sleeping Giant” looking for answers and peace for the old medicine man.
“Haunted Hills of Ivy” by Daniel W. Barefoot published in 2004 in hardcover tells about ghosts in southern colleges and universities. He’s a man that collects ghost stories but wasn’t really sure they existed. Then he and his wife had a little experience of their own.
The Pride of Chowan, a then-female college in Murfreesboro, North Carolina caught my eye first. Confederate Soldiers sought to quarter their men at Chowan during the Civil War. Young ladies including a student referred to as Julia stood up to stop them.
Julia’s problem didn’t end with that success. Her southern-born fiancé went off to fight the war—-for the Union! He was killed in battle. Julia followed soon after; some say by illness, others say it was a broken heart. All agree that Julia returned to campus. She’s seen in the Columns Building looking anxious, searching for someone; always wearing a brown dress of the 1860s design. Thus she’s now dubbed The Brown Lady.
Another College, Flagler, in our country’s oldest city St. Augustine, Florida also has spirits walking its halls often. Henry Flagler became a millionaire through his partnership in Standard Oil. He built a 540 room palace that later became the Ponce de Leon Hotel when he built a 55-room mansion in Palm Beach for his third wife, Mary Lily. Later it became Flagler College. Henry’s and Mary Lily’s ghosts have been spotted by Flagler students and security guards as well.
Any title of a book that ties into Bordentown draws my attention. “The Man Who Had Been King” by Patricia Tyson Stroud is a biography of former Bordentown resident Joseph Bonaparte. I saw many Bordentown folks at Ms. Tyson’s book signing in Princeton a few years ago.
Although he was the eldest sibling of his family, Joseph gladly left the military expertise to his younger brother Napoleon. He preferred gardening to being King of Spain. After the collapse of Napoleon all of the family Bonaparte were exiled from France. Joseph immigrated to America choosing Bordentown to live for its location on the Delaware River and its close proximity to Philadelphia and New York. Yet it still offered solitude and countryside pastoral beauty.
Stroud thoroughly covers his life, the people who surrounded him, including his many romantic affairs and his Bordentown years. Pointe Breeze often was host to the prominent people of the era. He was thoughtful and kind, gifting many of his exquisite art and furniture to friends or acquaintances. He formed long-term friendships with Bordentown residents, too. William Norcross continued to receive letters after Joseph returned to Europe. An earlier Alphonse Lejambre received a billiard table and set of ivory billiard balls. Bordentown’s Joseph Hopkinson was an executor of his Last Will in which he left Pointe Breeze to his grandson Joseph. Enjoy.

