Typewriter Beach

 

MEG WAITE CLAYTON

Stats: Trade paperback, Harper, expected publication 7/1/25.

How acquired: Won in a Goodreads giveaway.

(Goodreads synopsis below.)

My thoughts: When I first started reading, I was immediately captivated by the writing. I love Old Hollywood, old movies, the stars. With the young Isabella being an aspiring actress, and Leo being a blacklisted screenwriter, there was a lot of name dropping. And to my surprise, it bothered me a little at first. When the author would mention someone real, Garbo, Hitchcock, Bergman, and give an anecdote that I’d not ever heard before, I would wonder if it was true, or was the author taking poetic license. From what I could gather, the author did a lot of research, especially about Hitchcock and blacklisting, but even so, how much was true and how much was for the sake of this story? But once I got really settled into the dual stories – Iz and Leo in 1957, Iz and Leo’s granddaughter, Gemma, plus neighbor Sam, in 2018 - I was totally riveted and along for the ride, no longer caring how much was true and how much was not.

Wonderful, realistic characters. Vivid descriptions of Carmel.

Achingly beautiful.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

1957. Isabella Giori is ten months into a standard 7-year studio contract when she auditions with Hitchcock. Just weeks later, she is sequestered by the studio’s “fixer” in a charming little Carmel-by-the-Sea cottage for a secret rendezvous. There, she is awoken by the clack and ding of a typewriter at the cottage next door. 

Léon Chazan is annoyed as hell when Iz interrupts his work on yet another screenplay he won’t be able to sell, because he’s been blacklisted. But soon he’s speeding down the fog-shrouded Carmel-San Simeon highway, headed for the isolated cliffs of Big Sur, with her in the passenger seat. 

2018. Twenty-six-year-old screenwriter Gemma Chazan, in Carmel to sell her grandfather’s cottage, finds a hidden safe with a World War II-era French passport, an old camera with film still in it, two movie scripts, and a writing Oscar that is not in her grandfather’s name—raising questions about who the screenwriter known simply as Chazan really was.

The Road Before Us

 

JANINE ROSCHE

Stats: Trade paperback, Revell, 2024.

How acquired: Revell Reads Blogger Program

First line: Miles from any high-rise, the generations-old asphalt crumbles beneath the soles of my borrowed boots, and I wish my story would fall through the hot cracks along with it.

(Goodreads synopsis below.)

My thoughts: I’ve never felt any desire to travel the old Route 66. I have traveled a very small portion of it, though not in many many years. But traveling along with Jade, Bridger, and Bernie made it sound like a worthwhile journey to take.

The trio are traversing Route 66 while shooting a documentary about Benny, who traveled the same route in 1956, headed to Hollywood to become a star. Along the way, they visit landmarks, both well known, and personal to Benny, such as motels where she and Paul, the love of her life, stayed on their journey, or other places they stopped to visit. But the journey is also personal for Jade, who has bittersweet memories of traveling with her father in the summer of 2003. The narrative bounces between those two times and the present day, with each section told in first person POV. I enjoyed Benny’s sections the most, as she and Paul fall in love on the way. I probably would have been happy with a book just about the two of them.

In 2003, Jade is eight years old, and I struggled a little with her narration. If I hadn’t known she was eight I might have thought she was only five or six. But I’m not sure if her narration really came off that way, or if I just don’t remember what an eight year old is like, not having been around one since my now adult daughters were that age.

Adult Jade, however, along with Benny, both her younger self and her current day elderly self, and Bridger, her foster son, were all beautifully written. Bridger is a very quirky character who often made me laugh. In her Author’s Note, Ms. Rosche tells us that she traveled all 2,448 miles of Historic Route 66, and it shows in her writing. She packs in so much interesting and descriptive detail about the road and the towns along the way that THE ROAD BEFORE US could serve as a travel guide.

I very much enjoyed traveling along with this trio, and was sorry to part company with them. Bridger and Jade were about to embark on a new journey when I turned the last page, and I desperately wanted to accompany them.

*Received via the Revell Reads Blogger Program and voluntarily reviewed*

Synopsis from Goodreads:

How far would you go to fix the mistakes you've made and regain the trust you lost? For Jade Jessup, the answer is 2,448 miles. Once one of Chicago's significant financial advisors, Jade lost her credibility when her fiancé (and coworker) stole millions of dollars from their clients in a Ponzi scheme. Now she's agreed to help one of them--an aging 1960s Hollywood starlet named Berenice "Benny" Alderidge--seek financial restoration. 

Jade sets off along Route 66 with Benny and her handsome adult foster son, Bridger, who is filming a documentary retracing the 1956 trip that started the love story between Benny and her recently deceased husband, Paul. Listening to Benny recount her story draws Jade into memories of her own darker association with Route 66, when she was kidnapped as a child by a man the media labeled a monster--but she remembers only as daddy. 

Together, all three of these pilgrims will learn about family, forgiveness, and what it means to live free of the past. But not before Jade faces a second staggering betrayal that changes everything.

Summer Doctor

CHARLES H. KNICKERBOCKER

Synopsis from Goodreads: This is a novel about a very unusual kind of a doctor. Daniel van Dine, M.D., is inclined to wear coveralls, a flannel shirt, and hip-length fisherman’s boots, and he has a sense of humor. He is a nonconformist and a humanist with a keen sense of history. His religious inclinations are rather strong. He is constantly seeking the reason for human suffering and pain. He feels that a deeply personal doctor-patient relationship is more important than the glamor of medical progress.

Dr. Dan decides to locate on a remote island off the cost of Maine. Here, he will be very busy ten weeks out of every year, for Juniper Island is a summer resort. Here, also, he will be lonely, for the conditions in the winter are primitive and the island is inhabited then only by stubborn and cantankerous fishermen.

This is Dr. Dan’s own story of his first three years on Juniper Island. He treats his patients with compassion and individual understanding. He discovers that a doctor can learn more from his patients than he is ever taught in medical school.

Among his patients and neighbors are a much-married millionaire, a fisherman with a curious sense of ethics, a gloomy anthropologist, a violent artist, and a displaced cleric. Among the women who influence him are a city fashion editor, an ex-chorus girl, a spinster librarian, a gin-loving Indian midwife, and an unusual adolescent. One of these manages to marry him. Also, he owns a dog, a mangy hound answering to the unlikely name of Slob.

Dr. Dan tells his story with wit and wisdom. His career is one of growth, and he reaches certain conclusions of interest to doctors and patients alike.

Stats for my copy: Hardback, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1963.

How acquired: From my mom.

First line: “Where is this Juniper Island?”

My thoughts: Young doctor is discharged from military service after serving as a medic in the Korean war, and finds he has no desire to begin his civilian life practicing medicine in a big city where doctors and patients maintain a purely professional relationship and don't actually get to know each other. He remembers vacationing on Juniper Island as a child one summer, and decides to relocate, showing up on the island with no plans in place, nowhere to stay, and no way to actually get back and forth between the island and the mainland since the only bridge was washed away. But with the help of an local he quickly finds himself trading his brand new Thunderbird for an old rusty boat and a fixer upper of a house.

Dr. Daniel van Vine, or Doc as he becomes known, didn't really know what he was getting into, but I loved the way he just barged ahead practically on a whim and set up shop, or rather practice, in his new home on the island. The locals are all pretty colorful characters, and Dan's first person narrative about his interactions and exploits with them are amusing, and filled with lots of slightly philosophical ruminations on life. Some of the conversations about women and their role in society were quaint and antiquated, but the book was written over fifty years ago, so it didn't bother me. I am glad, however, that doctors today do not share Dan's belief that:

“...far too much attention is paid, by doctors and patients alike, to the problem of high blood pressure. I could practice just as good medicine, and my patients would live just as long, and more happily, if I threw away my blood pressure machine, but I don't dare.”

When my prescription for my blood pressure medication expired and I wasn't able to get it renewed right away I went off my medication for almost two weeks, and by the end of that second week I felt like I was going to have a heart attack if I did anything that required the least exertion!

Overall I really enjoyed this chatty and engaging book, and I think I'll look around for the author's other books.