Ponder: Found

Found is a crime thriller by Erin Kinsley. It was engaging and not a waste of time if you like the crime novel genre, but I think it fell short of its touted five star praises. I bought it for $.99 to read in a Kindle version based on its high ratings from BookBub where it was featured one day in February. We had painters in our house four days last week and so I was pretty much a captive audience sitting in front of my computer screen reading the download while staying out of their way. I do not regret the $.99 nor the time I spent reading it, but both the price and the time I invested were about par for the quality of the book. My three star rating translates to Better than average; not a waste of time.

Comments by Goodreads Reviewers who rated the book five stars enticed me to read this book

• ‘If you read one book this year make sure it’s Found!’
• ‘Not often I finish a book in one day but I couldn’t put it down.’
• ‘Heartfelt, traumatic, terrifying...just an amazing read. An easy five stars’
• ‘An amazing read...every single parent’s worse nightmare but written in a truly beautiful way’

I found that that his novel had more of an emotional pluck-your-heart-strings bent than the usual fear-induced suspense of crime thrillers. Living inside the home of the parents of eleven year old Evan while the search for him is ongoing reveals side effects of a child snatching crime that the public rarely glimpses. Truly heartbreaking is the parental stress, trauma, and marital friction that result and evolve as hours stretch into days, days stretch into weeks, and weeks stretch into months of their son being missing. A plot synopsis from BookBub focuses more on solving the crime than on the familial ramifications of it's committal.

A boy’s disappearance baffles the police. But the real mystery begins when he returns… Can Detective Inspector Naylor catch the people who took him — before they strike again? With nearly 3,000 five-star Goodreads ratings, this page-turner is “impossible to put down!” (Edgar Award–winning author Minette Walters). featured on BookBub on February 09, 2020

Having their child returned to them is not the sunshine and roses one would believe. Evan is changed – drastically changed – in a manner befuddling those around him. He is psychologically damaged. His elective mutism and self-imposed social isolation stand in the way of any efforts to help him heal and offer little assistance to the police who are trying to catch his abductors. Thankfully the reader never learns the specifics of what atrocities may have been done with or to him in the time he was gone, October to June, only that he must have suffered. What I found most appealing and heartwarming in this book was the way Evan's grandparents could reach him when his parents were unable.

The book has four sections and takes place over the course of a year, October to September

• Your Worst Nightmare (chapters 1-9)
• The Answer to All Your Prayers (chapters 10-31)
• Somebody Else's Child (chapters 32-49)
• Sunlight on Water (aftermath in months of July and September)

Your Worst Nightmare focuses on when Evan is first taken. There is a reconstruction of the events up to his point of abduction from the bus stop, re-enacted hopefully to glean any clues for the police that can lead to finding him. The angst of his parents while he is missing for nine months is in the spotlight. The Answer to Your Prayers concentrates on Evan's psychological and emotional condition upon his return as relates to his family and friends. It is not until Somebody Else's Child, and a second child abduction that clues are compiled to lead to the perpetrators. In that sense, the crime element is only about a third of the book. The final two months, Sunlight on Water, are mainly a denouement.

mystery sticker from zazzle.com

As a psychological character study, this book was exceedingly probing and worth reading. For a reader who is looking for a crime to solve that they can really sink their teeth into, the scattering of a few clues in the final third of the novel makes the detective aspect a bit disappointing. I rate Found three stars.

Ponder: One Thing Leads to Another

My county in California has just issued a shelter in place mandate staring midnight tonight 3/16/20 lasting for the next three weeks due to the coronavirus COVID-19. I can be productive during this hiatus by using my time to sew, declutter, tidy, read the news ad nauseam; but I can also relax and entertain myself  by watching movies, reading, or also by looking through my blog and see if there are any draft posts languishing that I never finished nor published. I was surprised to find one that was last touched March 1, 2016. Yes. Four years ago. I was about to delete it but then reading it brought a smile to my face so I thought I would share.

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A few weeks ago the plastic beaded cord loop snapped on a sun screening roller shade in our kitchen nook. Two ends were flapping in the breeze per se as they hung there but the shade still functioned to raise and lower it. Frank attached two mini-binder clips to act as end grips and we ignored the problem. The UV sun rays must have been doing their work as each of the five shades began failing one by one within days of each other. After the one in the nook, a few days later, two other roller shades in the kitchen broke in the same manner. They were over the sink however and I could not reach the ends of the cords when they were in the higher position. It was time to stop ignoring the issue.

I went online to a great site I've used in the past called Fix My Blinds. It has every part you could imagine - the correct thickness of cord, spoked wheels, clear wands, bottom plugs, etc. I ordered enough length of the beaded cord in the correct diameter and spacing of beads (there are several options) and the joining couplers to recreate a loop for each of the five windows. I usually like the philosophy "if it ain't broke don't fix it" but realistically, the other two were probably due to break really soon. Fortunately the box of repair parts arrived in less than a week for minimal postage, too. In the interim I had to keep dragging over a chair to reach, or calling Frank to adjust the shade position, or keep squinting and getting a headache, or live in darkness with them in the down position. The setting sun blaring in through our windows can be very strong.

To fix the blinds Frank had to take down the curtain valances. I noticed that instead of white they were a filthy grey, so covered with dust they were.  I knew enough to put them in the dryer first to dust them off instead of immersing them in water and creating a charcoal colored sludge on their surface. So far so good. I then popped them in the washer – and promptly forgot I'd put them there until a day and a half later when I went to do a load of laundry, opened the lid and – surprise, there they were. But they were not sitting all pressed out to the edges of the drum as after the spin cycle. Oh, no. Not that simple. The washer was still full. Something with the timer or another part had broken and the water level was near the top. The water was still sudsy too so I knew it had never made it to the rinse cycle. At least the curtains got a good soak.

We had been living several weeks with an intermittently functioning agitator. That is annoying but you really cannot fix something until it is truly broken or repeats the malfunction consistently. Water fill and draining had not been a concern. Now the washer was truly broken. I was not about to hand rinse the valances from five windows so I stood at the washer and clicked the timer control manually a small angular rotation at a time and babied the load through drain, refill, rinse, drain, and spin by jumping to a different segment on the dial, within whatever type of wash cycle and wherever within that cycle I could find a functioning feature of choice. With persistence I was successful.

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So where am I today, four years later? New curtains. New appliances. The curtains were hung again shortly after the blinds were fixed, although, since then, they have been replaced in the nook but not in the kitchen.

Not one to throw away anything, those white curtains with the red embroidery still linger in my overcrowded, junked-up linen closet, which is in need of a good purging.

That washer had to be repaired again, as described in my 5/24/18 post titled Appliance Woes only to break once again, less than a year later. We bought a new washer/dryer pair and they were installed 3/16/19. Six months later on 9/16/19 the dryer needed to be repaired for the second time because it was cooking the clothes independent of the heat setting. The repair man told me there was nothing wrong. I said that was not true; he could not find what was wrong. So they replaced all the parts. Works like a charm now. Today is the washer/dryer's one year anniversary.

Ponder: The Edge of Lost

The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris ©2015 is the second novel I have read by this author. I loved it! I rated it five stars, the same rating I had given to the first novel I'd read by her, Sold on Monday (post dated 2/7/20).

Within the first few pages I learned that the settings would take place in two locations: Dublin, Ireland in March of 1919 and Alcatraz Island in October of 1937. As I often do in dual-timeline novels, I wonder, "How on earth are these two storylines going to merge and be related?" In the Prologue, the story opens in 1937 with an ongoing search all over the island for a 10 year old girl, the daughter of a prison guard at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. The closing words of the Prologue are the words with which an inmate reassures himself

He could do this.
The plan could work.
So long as they didn't find the girl.

Leaving the reader in suspense, the story abruptly cuts to Dublin, Ireland in 1919 where an 11 year old boy earns money entertaining in a pub. Shanley Keagan lives meagerly with his gruff Uncle Will, having been left to his "care" when his mother died. Shanley has quite a talent for telling jokes, singing tunes, and performing impersonations; he aspires to be a vaudevillian. His earnings are often the only wages that provide food for him and his Uncle Will. Shanley is incredibly adept at reading people in order to interpret and anticipate their responses. This skill serves him well for his entertaining on the stage but even more so for his general relationships off the stage.

In the words of the Kristina McMorris in an online YouTube book trailer for The Edge of Lost 

Eventually Shanley gets his dream chance to set sail to America but tragedy strikes en route and in order to survive he will have to summon all his ingenuity and strength. All of this essentially laid a foundation for a story about hope, identity and second chances.

The settings are portrayed skillfully so the reader is immersed in the scrappy, scrounging streets, pubs and breadlines of Dublin. Later, the reader is crowded within the bowels of a ship for the cross-Atlantic journey. Excitement, hope, and other emotional extremes emerge at the first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty followed by the bustling, jostling, disembarking onto Ellis Island.

The multi-nationality neighborhoods of New York City are a culture shock. The harshness and conditions within Alcatraz prison are relayed in great detail. Each of these environments has been researched in order to depict them so authentically. One wonders how anybody can adjust to so many wildly varying environments.

The characters are realistically portrayed and are definitely three dimensional. I appreciated and enjoyed how their motives and impulses were revealed and I felt empathy and understanding for them. I suffered along with them and felt their pain in the bad times. The basic good in the majority of the characters and mutual support among them made for an uplifting read. This book was a page turner. I was thoroughly invested in the characters as they navigated life. I cared about both the major and minor characters.

The Edge of Lost is classified as a historical novel. I felt it had been well researched especially in order to bring all the settings to life. Kristin McMorris painted a vivd picture in my mind of the immigrants entrance and registration upon arrival at Ellis Island. I never realized that families of civilian personnel of the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary lived on the island with the notorious inmates as their neighbors. Per the Author's Note at the end of the book, Kristina McMorris tells that her inspiration for the book came from

an intriguing documentary titled Children of Alcatraz. The compilation of interviews featured people who had grown up on Alcatraz Island as children of prison staff, some even claiming to have secretly befriended notorious inmates despite rules to prevent any contact.

I highly recommend The Edge of Lost for a broad range of audiences. It earned my five star rating by the variety of the settings, the warmth of the characters, and the creativity of the plot that made me clamor for more.