We Hope for Better Things - Erin Bartels

Some books you feel lucky you found, don't you?  I belong to an on-line quarterly book club, and this was the choice recently.  I had never heard of it, and a member who had read it passed it on to me.  I read all sorts of things, but like of us all I do enjoy a story that encourages you onwards with "just another page/chapter - or two/three/four!"

We Hope For Better Things has three separate time lines - The American Civil War, the Detroit Riots in the 1960s and today.  The leading characters are all women, Mary during the Civil War, Nora in the 1960s and Elizabeth today, who tells you this complicated but so cleverly linked story.  Can love overcome everything?  I think we always hope so, but it isn't always the case, and then again, sometimes life conspires to find us in the wrong place and then it isn't plain sailing.  This is a book about three women who don't necessarily get the happy ending they started out wishing for.  Bartel's understanding of race and prejudice makes this a book worth reading, because each woman is different, each lives in a different time and each has a major problem which haunts them.  The sense of history is given in glimpsed descriptions of the times but we are made to understand that in the case of Mary and Nora, society at large often conspires against us.  Secrets are revealed slowly and surely as the pages are turned.  Warning - don't read the last paragraph  before you start, but read it twice when you finish!

I know this description of the book is rather vague, but reader, if you are intrigued, I want you to discover this one yourself because for me it really was a wonderful read.