A Death in Durango by Doug Twohill
I requested this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program because I've been to Durango, Colorado, and I liked the cover art (particularly with the train on the left and the river on the right, evoking the Durango & Silverton Railroad and the Animas River, respectively). I also liked novice author Doug Twohill's statement that all his book sale profits will be donated to the Community Foundation of Southwest Colorado.
This book is a collection of Western short stories bookended with a modern-day murder mystery. If you're reading for the mystery, you'll be disappointed, as it's just a (rather weak) framework for the "stories, facts, legends, myths, and lies of the Old West" the "tale...is roughly based on," according to the preface.
Those short stories are good, and worth the read. While the multi-generational feud between the fictional Strickland and Vanderhorn families is the tie between the stories, there are enough real people (such as Charles Goodnight and Butch Cassidy) and places (like Mesa Verde and Farmington, New Mexico - see pages 20-23) to make me wonder just which stories might be more true than not.
Augusta by Celia Ryker
Celia Ryker has written a historical fiction account of the hardscrabble life of her grandmother Augusta, which is also the title of the novel. Augusta Young grew up in Arkansas and was married at about age 13 to a widowed neighbor over twice her age, giving birth to her first child at age 15. Ultimately they wind up in Detroit, Michigan, and Augusta's first husband abandons her. She remarries and is abandoned once again. Augusta deals with a lot of tough challenges and choices to survive as a single mother of four.
Augusta died when Celia was six, so some of the story is based one "second- and third-hand information," according to the author's note at the end of the book. Indeed, a quick search at Ancestry dot com brought up some contradictions to the story. However, the strength of the book lies in its portrayal of everyday life, in the Ozarks around 1910 and in Detroit in the 1920s and 1930s. For example, in chapter 18, Augusta learns how to use the "Easy Washer" washing machine in the basement of the home her second husband has rented, and the description is detailed and fascinating.
Vintage Christmas Tales: A Holiday Anthology
This 605-page volume is a collection of 16 Christmas-related stories (and one poem) originally published between 1823 and 1926 - in other words, works that are all now out of copyright.
Some were quite familiar to me, such as Clement Moore's "'Twas The Night Before Christmas" (the one poem, which serves as a preface, originally published as "Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas" in 1823), and O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" (1905). Others, such as Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" (1843) and "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams Bianco (1922), were familiar from their shorter forms in children's picture books (and of course, the 1962 cartoon version of Dickens' work featuring Mr. Magoo, which was my first introduction to that story).
Other stories include works that were new to me by well-known authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Washington Irving, and L. Frank Baum, and Alexandre Dumas. But the tale I liked best was "Christmas: A Story" (1912), by Zona Gale, about a small town that decides to skip Christmas - until they learn an orphan is coming to live with one of the townspeople on Christmas Eve. I also enjoyed "A Reversible Santa Claus" (1917) by Meredith Nicholson, a funny and exciting tale about a burglar who reforms on Christmas.
This really isn't a children's book, but some of the stories could be read aloud, particularly to older children. In general, the longer stories are towards the end of the book.
Although the authors' names are given in the table of contents, they aren't repeated at the beginning of each story. I would have appreciated that as well as including the year of original publication. I also found numerous errors in spelling, punctuation, and word spacing in "Babes in Toyland" (1904) by Glen MacDonough and Anna Alice Chapin (another favorite movie from childhood). The book is nicely bound and has an attractive cover with an abstract patchwork design in shades of red and green.
