Happy Monday! Or again, Happy Tuesday as this is another late post. Next Monday I should be back on track and on time, but yesterday was a ‘rest’ day between two 3-day jaunts.  Well, not so much rest as I caught up on lawn mowing after 4” of rain fell while I was gone, then I prepped for today’s leaving (I returned home Sunday afternoon from jaunt #1), and I squeezed in the weekly Zoom book club with my Grand. That’s where this month’s Book Review Monday! comes in. I hope your week started off well, too.

K and I have been doing a Zoom book club for several months, The Lost Apothecary which I reviewed here was one of our selections. K is seventeen, a rising senior, and likes books that include different cultures and ethnicities, we’ve read novels that include LGBTQ main characters, and like The Women of the Post about the only Black WWII WAC unit, she also likes books set in specific historical eras. For our recent family beach trip, I gave her a bookmark that said. ‘A well-read woman is a dangerous thing.’ K is going to be a danger.

To the Moon and Back contains all the above elements, which is why K chose it. The main character, Steph, is a gay Indigenous woman whom we follow from her pre-teen years to what we believe will be her 40s. The last section is titled, Ten Years Later, and since she’s currently in her mid-30s, we did the math. Other characters include her mom and sister, a couple partners, and assorted friends and co-workers. The story follows Steph’s dream–obsession–to be a NASA astronaut and be selected for a space mission. In her zeal Steph’s focus blinds her to other things going on around her and that causes problems. There’s also the revealing of family secrets and tragedies that cause problems of their own.

How the author handles the historical setting is one of the most interesting elements for me. The novel opens in 1987 and will close in 2027. During this time computers were just becoming common household electronics, the World Wide Web became public, and social media started its progression from MySpace to Facebook to Pinterest to Instagram to whatever the latest social app is out there now. Ramage uses many of them to move the story along, to set the narrative in a specific time, and to reveal character development without writing a lot of prose. Those devises, including Steph’s sister Kayla as an influencer with her own blog, almost become another character in the story. This is one point K and I discuss almost every week and because she’s of the generation that has always had this access, her insights have been entertaining.

K and I are enjoying the book, she probably more than I at the moment. We’re both having issues with Steph. I won’t give any more away than that. Never any spoiler alerts in these reviews. The author included some surprises that have kept us invested. After the last 100 pages, that included sharks–very appropriate for Shark Week this week–we’re both very curious how frayed ends will be tied up and especially how Steph evolves. And if she ever gets her space mission. We’ll find out this week.

Last week was an abbreviated Nana and Papa Camp so even though not a full week, it was full. We didn’t make it to the movies, but we did spend an hour and a half at a trampoline venue with pits filled with blocks of foam to cushion drops from zip lines, and diving platforms, walls to scale (E looked like a spider scrambling up), and basketball and dodgeball played on floors that bounced with every move. Here are a few pics from the week: sun photos, clay magnet making, indoor putt-putt, and tie-dying.

In a few hours I leave again, this time for a Poet Sisters’ gathering in the mountains. We’ll be tweaking and polishing our collection readying it for submission. It’s been two years since we’ve all been in the same place at the same time so there will be much catching up, too.

I’m off to finish packing! I hope your week includes a good book or two, and connections with loved ones. I’ll be back on Monday … at least that’s the plan!