Writer’s Block
Hanukkah ended last week, Christmas is this Friday, and soon we will welcome 2021. I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t wait to kick 2020 to the curb.
With my job and the holidays I’m going to be busy for the next few weeks. But don’t fret. I plan on reading a lot and writing more book reviews in the new year so look for my new reviews and other book-related goodies come January.
Book Marks
Entertainment Weekly’s list of the best books of 2020.
Amazon is still screwing over writers and publishers.
Enter Writer’s Digest awards for best self-published book.
Six strategies to get your friends to read you book recommendations.
How history of book burning can help us preserve knowledge.
Read these nine novels to make sense of our crazy political landscape.
Independent bookstores’ picks for the must-reads of 2021.
Book sales are booming in the age of Covid-19.
Roald Dahl’s family apologizes for the author’s anti-Semitic comments.
Denver’s very own Tattered Cover Books is the largest black-owned bookstore in the United States.
Off the Books
Our Books, Our Shelves
One of the best rock and roll memoirs I’ve ever read.
Book Review: Wild Horses on the Salt by Anne Montgomery
In Anne Montgomery’s novel Wild Horses on the Salt, Rebecca “Becca” Quinn knows her life will never get better unless she escapes her cruel and abusive husband.
Battered and bruised, her sense of self-worth in tatters, Becca leaves her life in New Jersey and flies out to Arizona. Waiting for Becca is Gaby, her aunt’s college roommate. Gaby gives Becca a place to hide and heal at the Salt River Inn.
Not only does Becca connect with Gaby, she also bonds with Gaby’s gentleman friend Walt, a local blacksmith, and Oscar Billingsley, a retired psychiatrist with a passion for bird watching.
And Becca also becomes acquainted with cattle rancher and bee keeper Noah Tanner. Noah just might be the man to rekindle her belief in love and to value herself as a worthy human being.
Other than her group of supportive friends and the splendor of Arizona including wild horses, Becca also indulges in her true passion-art. This passion gives her life more meaning and joy than her previous vocation as a lawyer.
On her path to wholeness, Becca has time to reflect on how her dysfunctional upbringing caused her to end up in the arms of an abusive man. She also comes to terms on how her parents’ rigidity forced her into a career as a lawyer, instead of the life of an artist.
Yet, Becca’s past will not define her. Her talent as an artist gathers her some much deserved praise and success. She learns more about the plight of Arizona’s wild horses and how to recognize various birds. She also becomes closer to Noah whose kindness and decency help heal her. Will Noah be a part of her new life or will he be a romantic disappointment?
However, Becca’s husband finds her in Arizona. He goes to horrific lengths to claim her and take her back to New Jersey. It’s at this point Becca must find her inner strength to defy him and be the powerful survivor she is. She refuses to be a victim.
Though a bit slow at times, Wild Horses on the Salt is vividly descriptive and an important story about overcoming terrible odds. Becca is a heroine you root for and can relate to.
Off the Books
It’s officially Christmas time at Chez Bookish Jen.
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