<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  #1: Kim Edwards,  Lake of Dreams  An American woman living in Japan returns to her childhood home overlooking a lake. Lucy&amp;#039;s passion for travel and her expertise in hydrology have carved a path for her around the world. But coming home, disconnected from her nomadic life and her lover, is where the quiet stillness allows her to finally come to grips with her sense of guilt and loss about the death of her Father. Lucy&amp;#039;s uncommon lock-picking skill is a slightly contrived reminder that she possesses the ability to unlock her own past. Wedged into this storyline are an encounter with her first serious boyfriend\u2014now a successful glassmaker\u2014and her attraction to him. Though she unsurprisingly uncovers her own family&amp;#039;s buried secrets and sins when she delves into the past, the real closure that the truth brings does overshadow the predictability of some plot twists.\u2014Joanne M. Choi, Boston, MA The past cannot be swept under the rug if we are to live fully in the present. This is a lesson that Lucy and her family must deal with after she finds a cache of hidden family letters and papers in a window seat in their fabled family home. The Lake of Dreams delves into genealogy, family secrets, a mysterious death, decorative glassmaking, and the history of the suffragette movement. Lucy&amp;#039;s search for the truth makes for an engrossing page-turner.\u2014Beth Brezinski, Scottsdale, AZ The Lake of Dreams is a lovely place steeped in history and stories. The main character, Lucy Jarrett, grows up hearing about her great grandfather and how he made his dream a reality after staying up late one night in 1910 to see Halley&amp;#039;s Comet. She&amp;#039;d heard the story her whole life\u2014the whole community was alarmed that the comet meant certain doom. But she never heard any mention of her great-grandfather&amp;#039;s sister, Rose, who was by his side that exciting night. After Lucy&amp;#039;s mother has a minor accident, Lucy takes a vacation from her home in Japan to visit. Shortly after arriving, she finds a hidden package of letters and pamphlets in the cupola of the old family home and becomes intrigued by the notion that her understanding of her family&amp;#039;s history is woefully incomplete. Lucy believes this mysterious part of her past might lead her to answers about her own interests and urges. She sets out to find answers, and in the process forces her entire family to face the consequences of acts long past. Edwards tells her story with a lyricism reminiscent of Mark Helprin, with a lovely cadence and tone, adding slight hints of the fantastic. The result is a lovely read of a story, but one that is not memorable so much as it is pretty. Lucy seems one-dimensional and disconnected from her immediate family, and this reader&amp;#039;s hopes that her insights and love for them would grow as she learned more about herself through the curious fragments of her past were not realized by the story&amp;#039;s end.\u2014Jenji Henson, Austin, TX   #2: Susan Froderberg,  Old Border Road  This story begins with the marriage of two 17-year-olds in an almost timeless dusty Southern Arizona town. The young bride hopes that her new life with her groom&amp;#039;s parents at a grand ranch house on Old Border Road will be the home she never had. The ranch, which is dependent upon the kindness of nature, is soon hit by a debilitating drought that persists throughout most of the story. The young woman gains wisdom from her husband&amp;#039;s parents and other characters in the tale, but the drought is not selective, and everyone&amp;#039;s flaws are left bare by story&amp;#039;s end. Sweat pools on the forehead at Froderberg&amp;#039;s evocation of the setting, it&amp;#039;s astonishing how richness and beauty can be evoked in descriptions of such weary, desolate, deprived elements. Each character is referred to in down-home terms that are at first charming in their innocence, such as Girl, Daughter, Son, and so on, but these become powerful symbols of their generic, lonely, isolated, rural life. Mostly, this story gains its tremendous power from the inspired, awake, verdant young woman who exists within and perceives the world with the sensibility of a poetess and a dreamer. This author is truly remarkable, and I very much look forward to her next work.\u2014Jenji Henson, Austin, TX This lean tale of a teenage bride forced by a series of small tragedies to rely more and more on her internal compass to go forward is enriched by Forderberg&amp;#039;s beautiful language. Evoking geographic detail with echoes of Wallace Stegner, her every word is perfectly chosen. The drought that destroys their land and dreams pushes Katherine to decide between Son and a life of her own, with its own mistakes and perils. This is not an easy or comfortable read, but it&amp;#039;s impossible to take in Froderberg&amp;#039;s words and come away unchanged.\u2014Heather Seggel, Ukiah, CA It may take a chapter or two to get used to Froderberg&amp;#039;s unique voice, but once you&amp;#039;re in, her poetic prose is a beautiful vehicle for this arresting story of a young girl making her way in a dusty and difficult world. This novel is a true work of art, a descendent in the tradition of William Faulkner.\u2014Ginger Pennington, Santa Monica, CA   #3: Anita Shreve,  Rescue  True confession: In my life as a bookseller, I never felt the need to read Anita Shreve&amp;#039;s books. She&amp;#039;s got a lot of fans, and at this point the books sell themselves. How pleasant to pick up Rescue and find out just why that&amp;#039;s the case. When EMT Peter Webster falls in love at first sight with a woman he pulls from the wreckage of an accident, it&amp;#039;s clear that his largely predictable life is due for a major tweaking. Sheila Arsenault may just want a way out of the dangerous life that she&amp;#039;s led so far. But marriage and the birth of their first child drive Sheila back to her old ways, and she leaves Peter and their daughter, Rowan, behind. Years later, a teenage Rowan is spiraling out of control and Peter must find Sheila and ask her help before it&amp;#039;s too late. At no point does Shreve push the drama past the point of reason; Sheila has problems, but she&amp;#039;s not Courtney Love. Peter&amp;#039;s a great guy with good intentions, still trying to do the right thing, and we hope Rowan will be okay as much for his sake as her own. Rescue is a fine story, told without embellishment by an artist steering her craft like a master.\u2014Heather Seggel, Ukiah, CA There is magic in daily life, and Shreve weaves the story of this flawed family so subtly through seasons and years that you live it with them, appreciating your own simple moments. The heavy drama is in the other characters, but it is Webster&amp;#039;s story that kept me turning pages.\u2014Narci Drossos, Valdosta, GA In the present, Peter Webster is the single dad of an artistic, troubled teenage girl. Eighteen years prior, Webster is a naive young paramedic who falls for a rude, self-absorbed hedonist. This is a story of love and reconciliation, and a story that should be told, but it unfolds a little slowly due to the extended flashback, and the fact that Sheila is, from the get-go, a mostly repulsive character.\u2014Ginger Pennington, Santa Monica, CA   Shreve writes adeptly and efficiently, but this story seems misguided and misinformed. I found myself wishing she&amp;#039;d told the tale from the perspective of one of the woman characters instead of the male. Shreve describes his struggle, angst, and troubled relationships with clear, flowing prose, but I never bonded with Peter because his emotions seemed too feminine, too translated.\u2014Jenji Henson, Austin, TX  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a11490/elles-lettres-january-519106/>